Birthdays! We must start with greetings! Happy Birthday greetings are going out today to fellow geek Chiqui and our once adopted son, Sonny!Happy birthday to both of you! Make the most of your special day!

Last night was certainly interesting in many, many ways.

Work was pretty busy given some significantly important decisions made that led to inevitable announcements. I'm feeling good about the changes since the recent changes complement my shift in job responsibilities and perhaps in some ways help accelerate my transition to my new role. I'm definitely feeling all good and positive about what all this is bringing in terms of job fulfillment and I guess I'll just have to leave it to fate to see if this will also bring some shallower, more material benefits like a raise or something. Yes, those things do exist! This I believe! LOL

I feel like ever since my transition, the number of meetings that I attend in the week have definitely increased in a rather significant way. I'm not complaining or anything - I have to admit that the additional meetings aren't necessarily all related to my new role after all. Still, it's eating up a fair amount of my time and I find myself going back and forth between our two sites in order to fulfill all of my obligations. No rest for the wicked and all that.

So when I arrived back at the Sietch this morning, I decided to vent my stress and frustrations into cooking and I had been meaning to cook up another batch of chicken tinola for some time now. It's a fairly simple dish that's a lot heavier in terms of preparation and all that chopping, mincing and dicing was exactly what I needed to start to feel a lot more relaxed. I have to admit, I'm surprised at how easily a lot of my stress fades away as I focus on making the precise cuts, slices and all that knife work. Even in cooking, I can find ways to exert order and fulfill the more OCD side of my personality.

I still want to devote more time to my Google Sites project related to the cooking, cleaning and geekery that goes on here, so I'll leave things this way for now.

That, and the fact that I still seem to have a cough. Crap.

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Wally is such a master of work evasion! LOL

I have two hats, the left and the - oh wait, wrong song analogy. Anyway, let's talk about work just so we can get it out of the way (and because there are no birthdays of significant importance that I'm aware of).

This weeks marks the second week of my new expanded responsibilities. I now handle both Training and the Audit & Compliance team in a joint capacity as I gradually transition out of Training and fully into Compliance. It's added to my workload, naturally, and I'm still in the process of fully assessing the situation in terms of my new team and the backlog of paperwork that inevitably comes along with such transitions. This isn't the first time that I've had to deal with this and it's good to know that the virtual checklist in my head remains intact and workable. I'd like to think that I've done a decent job thus far of covering all the basis with the true goal of getting all this out of the way in order to focus on more important matters. There's a reason I was tasked with the management of this function in the company and I want to start proving my worth in what is relatively new and unknown territory for me.

I finally gave in and have started to compile all my domestic "secrets" of sorts in the form of recipes I've acquired from friends and family that seem to work for me and the odd cleaning tip or use for baking soda in a website - specifically, a Google Site. Sietch Creare Lore is where I'm starting to transfer or transcribe all these little tips and tricks to have them in a central location. It makes it easier for me to refer to it when needed plus it eliminates the risk of completely losing some of these recipes that still exist on random pieces of paper or compiled from various websites around the web. It's nothing amazing just yet, but it's certainly a start and I've even made provisions so that Tobie can add in any recipes he comes up with, such as his insane desserts and his yummy salads.

In time I hope to create a second site dedicated for my geeky stuff and my writing, so I have a place for them too instead of multiple Google Docs here and there. It also seems like a nicely public place to use as a working canvas for the upcoming NaNoWriMo so I can document my progress. It'll probably be an embedded Google Document so I can still retain use of the word count features of Docs, but the general idea remains consistent. It'll be the one place where all my random song lyrics, cartoon theme songs and even text messages of note may one day reside. I've yet to get around to starting that particular page, but I know I will soon.

I'm sure many of you are wondering why I've even bothering to do this, what more in full view of the wide and diverse public that is the world wide web, but then that's just how I am. I'm a rather public internet personality by now and I don't see myself stopping in my practices. It's not like I totally give everything away - but I do share more than most, I know. It's just how I've chosen to interact with the internet - sort of an implicit trust in the world and the belief that information needs to be free and we all need to step up to the plate and learn to accept taking part in a larger world out there. You can choose to remain isolated in your part of the world or you can embrace the near limitless possibilities presented by the internet and learn all that you can of the world beyond. It sounds a tad lofty and certainly idealistic, but that's just how I see things.

And thus these projects continue and I continue to geek the world.

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I know, I know - but can you blame me? Admit it - you found this comic funny despite being so crude! ROFL!

What's with all the birthdays today? Plus most of them seem to be school-related, hehe. Today is the birthday of high school classmates Ben and Micko and my high school student council moderator Ser Bernz! Happy Birthday to all three of you and here's to hoping you have a really stellar birthday!

I slept at totally the wrong time last night given the fact Tobie and I stayed up all of Saturday despite being awake Friday night in line with our respective jobs. So after composing yesterday's blog entry, I pretty much fell asleep and missed everything else that happened during the night.

I woke up shortly before 04:00am and found a replacement faucet installed in the bathroom (thanks, Jon!) and the new PVC shelves already set up on opposite sides of the TV. Yes, Tobie had been quite busy in the night. I tried to get as much done in the morning before he woke up, but then I kind of failed at that since he woke up sooner that I had liked. Still, I had managed to get my batch of munggo started, the clean clothes organized and placed in the cabinet and some of the DVDs already moved to the new shelves. We had originally just bought one shelf to store all of our DVDs but Tobie had purchased an additional one so I could have the option of displaying some of my more favored books. *Squee*

So we eventually settled down to munggo as the sun was rising while we got around to watching this week's Star Wars: The Clone Wars. Not a typical breakfast, but it was definitely fun.

The rest of the morning was dedicated to getting the shelves utilized and the Sietch all ready for the afternoon game. It took some doing, but I finally settled on placing the following books on the shelves: all of my Dune books (of course), my Haruki Murakami books, my Neil Gaiman books, Stephen King's The Dark Tower series and finally all of my Terry Pratchett Discworld books. It was quite a trick to get them all shelved, but it pretty much worked out in the end.

Given that yesterday we had purchased a replacement copy for Murakami's Norwegian Wood, I suddenly realized that I pretty much lacked only three more books to complete my collection! Of course Hear the Wind Sing and Pinball, 1973 are very hard to find and I've been delaying my purchasing of After the Quake for some time now. Given the state of affairs, it wouldn't hurt to complete things. I also seem to have a nearly-complete collection of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels save for The Colour of Magic, The Fifth Elephant, The Last Hero, Maurice and his Educated Rodents and Wintersmith. I've read almost all of them, although recent purchases are still sealed in their Fully Booked wrappings. It's funny how I never noticed just how much I've collected over the years - obsessive book-buying has its benefits!

We still need to get proper shelves - these PVC ones aren't the strongest ones in the world after all. Besides, there are still hordes of other books that need to be shelved like my ridiculously large Star Wars novel collection, the Peter F Hamilton Books, the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency books, the Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke books I inherited from my father and my decently-sized Battletech book collection. Oh geek life! OCD-ish organization can be so much fun!

And now it's time for the weekly game. Huzzah once more - although downtime in Tobie's White Wolf games are definitely something to be feared!

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Aww, Pig, you're such a darling.

I haven't slept since I got up before shift yesterday, but I don't mind at all. Today has just been totally going GREAT and I have no complaints for the most part. Yes, this is one happy Eggy Buzzy Bee!

The work week ended up. I certainly had a few bumps here and there with my new team, but then it's only been a week and I know we all have a long way to go together. I'm glad I managed to squeeze in our first weekly meeting last night - the sessions was pretty fruitful in more ways than one. I just hope that it's a strong enough start to things to help set up the team for success. Sure, I recognize these things take time and a single meeting won't necessarily change things drastically just yet. However I'm a big believer in not just starting things right but doing so in a very strong manner, and I'm fairly certain I made sure of that this week.

But that was work. Now it's the weekend. Ain't life grand?

After a quick Julie's Bakeshop ensaymada breakfast, Tobie and I hit Gateway to catch Julie & Julia today given we were both very curious about Meryl Streep's performance in the movie. We ended up swinging by the main branch of National Bookstore in the area and ended up picking up a ridiculous number of books, many of which were as cheap as P20-P30! I also picked up a few newer titles including a replacement copy of Norwegian Wood for myself. Yay.

Sure, I know I'll have to deal with these credit card bills eventually, but in the meantime I'm a pretty happy camper (who is also rather campy to boot!)

The highlight of the day, really, was catching Julie & Julia. Of course, I entered the theater just expecting yet another stunning character performance by Meryl Streep but ended up with a whole lot more. The movie was, well, just "nice" if I try to look at thing from a more objective perspective. It's a story without major conflict or tension - the ladies just keep on cooking and we end up following along. It's quaint and poignant but not necessarily a powerful movie in itself. As always, kudos to Meryl and here's to yet another potential Oscar performance - or at the very least commendation for a very, very good impersonation of Julia Child.

What really got me was just how many things seemed to be sort of in common between me and various characters in the story. I'm a blogger who happens to be learning to cook while Julie was a person learning to cook French cuisine while blogging about it. Julie had frustrated dreams about writing and so do I. She had an amazingly supportive (and horny) husband and I have my similarly natured Archer. Julia Child had her great big book project of her life and I have the novel I may never finish. I cook for Archer, the man I love and so did both Julie and Julia. The parallels don't even end there, but I think I'm getting a bit too cheesy as it stands right now, hehe. Squee!

The movie totally made me remember to thank Archer for being amazingly supportive of me and all my little quirks, idiosyncrasies and stupid OCD-like behaviors. Here's a man who tries to make sure I have enough time to write my daily LJ entries, provides content for my Geeky Guide reviews, enjoys my cooking regardless of how good or bad it turned out and a man does his best night and day to make me feel like the most important (and perhaps even attractive) guy on the planet! I had gotten so used to being the strong supportive partner that it's a little weird for me still getting used to the highly active role Archer has taken in my life.

And it's not all about him working on this at all - we both are, as equals. Yes, that makes all the difference. Archer makes me feel special. Archer makes me feel blessed. Archer makes me feel loved. He does all this every single day in so many ways. It could be through the roses he randomly purchases and leaves for me to find when I get home or even in the effort he goes into to find us a even-numbered ray of supermarket dimsum so I won't freak out internally that the scallops won't be evenly distributed. Here's a man who watches my geek shows with me, shares even more shows for me to enjoy while also providing all these comic books to read to enhance my geek level. He surprises me with little gifts at random or prepares massive ice cream towers for dessert. He stays up late just to keep talking to me and he always makes sure everything is equal and fair.

This is my Archer and more and there can be no doubt on this Earth that I love him. I really, really do. And I am so thankful to have a man like him in my life, one to completes me and complements me at the same time. One who holds me tight and allows me to be truly free to be the geek that I am. There are just so many reasons, words will always fail me in trying to capture it.

I love you Archer!

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Terrific!

First off, Happy Birthday to fellow geeky Dante and a friend his geekdom is in very different areas, Emer! Happy Birthday to both of you! Enjoy the sunny cheery weather today!

It's been a weird food week for me. The problems with the Northern vegetable distribution network because of the aftereffects of the recent typhoons has spiked up the prices of many greens in the city and has caused unusual shortages like McDonald's Spaghetti for some reason. It's a major pain and I find myself preparing somewhat meatier dishes this week. In order to adapt to that (to a limited degree), I tried to purchase mainly chicken and fish, although I have some leftover pork in the fridge waiting to be added to an eventual batch of munggo this week. Any day now...

I was looking over my collection of Google Docs today and started to consider organizing all this in a new location. I mean seriously, I have such a diverse set of documents and spreadsheets dedicated to various geeky endeavors. For example, I have poems by e.e. cummings, the lyrics to the theme songs of the different Marvel Superheroes cartoons from the 60's, all the poem-spells recited by the Visionaries (both for the cartoon and the comics) and a short story by Isaac Asimov. I have stories and poems that I've worked on over the years and I have a document dedicated to various text forwards I found humorous or poignant at the time. I have spreadsheets tracking all my finances, a mock directory for delivery numbers the customer service hotlines and I have various surveys / tests I've administered at work for my people.

Like I said, it was a pretty diverse collection.

I'm now considering migrating all of my geekier / independent / non-confidential content to a Google Site or maybe a collection of Google Sites so I can have them in a more public location and one that will lend itself to more attention than hidden in the depths of my Google Docs directory. I'll probably host the various sites using the Geeky Guide domain via Google Apps, which means very long but certainly unique URLs as opposed to using the main Google Sites platform.

I know, I know, this doesn't sound at all important, but it's my blog so allow me to process this "out loud," so to speak.

It's also an opportunity for me to organize all the recipes I've collected in my cooking adventures, some of which still exist as independent emails or on various pieces of paper that my mother has given me during my visits home. It's not organized at all, unless you count my creating a Gmail label "Cooking" as the penultimate form of order, and so perhaps a series of Google Sites will help me organize my recipes and my collection of geeky artifacts from around the web. Oh, and don't get me started on what's still stored in my Google Notebook, hahaha!

So whether the web needs more stuff like this or not, the idea of organizing all this still in the pseudo public eye is growing on me and I just might work on it over the course of the next few weeks. Of course this is apart from my work on the Geeky Guide itself, my daily LJ entries and the various bits of cooking and cleaning I still need to address here at the Sietch.

Ah yes, this is the life.

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Man...he's good. Folks at the office could learn a thing or three from him, hehe.

Today is the birthday of my most fabulous, special, crazy, pretty, kooky, silly, funny, alluring sister, Mina! All will love her and despair rejoice! *enthusiastic cheer* Happy Birthday Mina!

I fell asleep almost immediately upon getting home from work today. Again. I swear, I hate it when my sleeping schedule is misaligned at the start of the week - it seems to take the rest of the week to get things back in line and once I'm fully adjusted, it's already the weekend. Boo that. And a double dumb ass on it too!

Given this morning's power nap being defeated by Tobie's determined efforts to wake me up, we managed to catch the first screening of Gamer over at Ali Mall. We considered it to be an Ali Mall movie given (1) we weren't exactly über-devoted-fan-boy excited about the movie, (2) no one was immediately raving about it and (3) it felt like a lazy day. The movie turned out to be decent with some good moments and interesting interpretations of certain gaming concepts when translated into real life, but it sorta got lost at the end and just stopped eventually. Michael C. Hall was surprisingly buff. Gerard Butler didn't have a gratuitous shirtless scene. Oh, and Milo Ventimiglia had a surprise cameo involving either latex or spandex. Yikes.

While walking around Ali Mall after the movie, naturally giving a running critique of the movie, we chanced upon one of those original DVD sale stands, this time for Viva. We always look but rarely buy anything and this time around we were surprised by locating an original copy of the SciFi Channel's Children of Dune miniseries. Once we saw that, we switched out of casual browsing mode to serious searching and ended up with another gem - an original copy of Imagine Me & You amongst the Buy 1 Take 1 titles. So I got that and a copy of Juno as the free movie. Then Tobie found a copy of Fiddler on the Roof and West Side Story, so we gobbled those up. The there was a 2-disc Director's Cut of Alien with a ton of extra features. So of course we got that one too. Oh, and a copy of Proof if only because Jake Gyllenhaal is yummy.

I really need to get around to adding these to the movie database. I've built up a bit of a queue of new titles in need of encoding. Ah well.

Now I need to force some sleep before work later. Wish me luck!

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I'll never think of the Bee Gees in the same way ever again.

Getting home really late yesterday totally threw off my sleeping patterns. It's just as well, I suppose. When I starting tallying how much extra time I spent at the office this week, I no longer felt as bad adjusting my schedule later in the day come Friday night. I still put in a good amount of time and I got a fair deal of work done but yes, I made sure my Friday was a little lighter in contrast to the rest of the week.

Last night's shift was mostly an MS Excel day. You know how those kinds of days go - despite reports being just a smaller part of the overall picture, one finds himself sitting in from of the computer for several hours straight doing nothing but number crunching. It's not just filling out a template - that's mundane and routine. It's more about those instances when you have data around you that you need to bring together and present as a logical whole. And thus you start with a blank spreadsheet and start populating it, dragging columns around, defining formulas until you end up with a full report with little color accents to brand it a bit and also make it more readable. That's what my night was like - about 3-4 hours of quality time with my workbooks and spreadsheets, my charts and graphs and all that good stuff to come up with a few deliverables requested in that really late and long meeting that made me go home pretty late the other day. I have to admit, I felt really good once everything was said and done, or in this case done and sent, haha.

Ugh, office humor can be so dry.

We're going to be gaming tonight instead of tomorrow since tomorrow looks like a pretty day. We're expecting a lot of Fandom Live! related activities and so in order to ensure that Fandom doesn't extend into my weird post-birthday celebration at O Bar, we had to move the game away from that period too. If not, we'd probably totally lack sleep and end up not making it to O Bar or something. This way we still have a chance to sleep after the game but still before Fandom. That's generally the plan - let's just hope things come together and this somehow works.

The on-going Changeling / Promethean game is starting to become a habit, if not a full on addiction for the folks involved. Okay, I can probably only confidently make this statement about me and Tobie and potentially Mahar but generally speaking we're all really enjoying the game and once a week is starting to feel like it's not enough...but it'll just have to do for now. Why does the week have to be so...work-filled and busy all the time? =P

Oh, and don't get me started on these stupid special holidays that GMA keeps dispensing left and right. Let's face it - the P6 billion BPO industry may contribute a lot of the gross national product of this country, but holidays like this do nothing for us but leave us feeling bad and practically shafted. What it does mean is that more restaurants are going to be closed for the day and there will be less public transportation vehicles on the roads. The MRT is going to follow it's reduced capacity holiday scheduling while all us BPO workers will still make our way to work.

Coincidentally, the coming Monday also happens to be Labor Day in the US, but that still doesn't benefit majority of the folks employed. Customer service inbound call queues don't often end for holidays and all the more sales queues that will rarely give up such a lucrative calling day such as a day when everyone is bound to be at home for long stretches of time. Yeah, these are the kinds of pointless ideas that get into my head when a special holiday is declared and I start asking the all important questions - (1) how will this apply to my team and (2) can I afford to be absent / on holiday? The answer to that last question is rarely a positive one.

But no point in griping now - all I can do is focus on the weekend and see how we might be able to squeeze out a bit more from the weekend. Excelsior!

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Poor, poor...pirate? =P

As I compose this entry, I'm just starting on my second cup of coffee. To go with it, I've brought out the second-to-the-last slice of Mahar's chocolate cake and have smothered it in the chocolate sauce. Sinful, I know, but oh so good no matter how you look at it.

It's funny that I've come to accept the fact that I suck at brewing for one. No matter what the coffeemaker, I feel that the proportions I employ for making coffee just work a lot better when I brew two cups. Sure, technically I am capable of brewing a single cup - I am a geek after all, but when I do, it feels wrong and the flavor isn't quite the same. I guess I've just gotten used to brewing at least two cups at a time that everything seems to be built around that experience. I can handle even larger batches of coffee when guests are around but the single cup will never feel right to me. And this is why I'm having a second cup of coffee right now - despite having no one to share it with, I still had to brew two cups.

Tobie isn't home yet - he probably won't catch me here at the Sietch today since he has a late meeting with his folks related to their business. It's no biggie, but I guess I've just gotten so used to the routine that happens in what has become my life here in Cubao. Normally around this time I'd be fussing about dinner - it could be as simple as one of those add-one-egg soups enhanced with the addition of additional veggies or something as ambitious as chicken fajitas. I would normally save brewing my pre-shift cup of coffee for a time closer to when I expect Tobie to get home. I'd even start mentally mapping out what shows we could watch in the limited time we'd both be home before I have to head off to work myself. Routines are the bread and butter of anyone with OCD-like tendencies and this has become mine.

Cooking has become quite the adventure for us. It's fun and I just keep reminding myself that it's largely like chemistry, so I should be able to manage things well enough. I seem to be getting the hang of things although I know I tend to make things rather spicy given my tastes. I don't know how other people might react to my creations, something that we'll definitely have to test one day on an audience other than Tobie, haha. In the meantime, I'm building up my confidence and experimenting with more and more recipes.

Still, it has also become one of those activities that just isn't as fun if done for one person and thus today I've settled on just steaming mini-siopaos and this wonderful slice of cake (which is still moist despite being in the fridge - amazing!) It's not as fun as the usual sort of meals I end up preparing but it's decent enough for now. Cooking beyond this seems odd when alone and I guess I'll just have to wait for the morning to further hone my cooking skills.

It's odd - when I was younger I always expected that I'd take well to living alone. But then ironically enough, I have never lived alone ever since I left the family home and it hasn't been an unpleasant experience. I guess this really goes to show that we humans are indeed social creatures and as long as the person you're living with is someone you can get along with, then things will really go better when you're not totally on your own.

All this as I reflect on the fact that today is yet another Wheelie Day, celebrating another month of life with Archer. Yes, things are definitely better when you have someone else in your life (and not just someone else living with you). Happy Wheelie Day, Archer! I love you!

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Poking fun at the Disney-Marvel acquisition is so not going to get old anytime soon, LOL