I'm currently sitting at a table outside of the resort house here in Laguna. I have Blacktron, my netbook, set up out here with my SmartBro USB modem hooked up and running well and a San Mig light at my side. The breeze is cool and quite lovely and the weather overall is great. As much as I hate leaving the comfort of the city and all its technological amenities that I've grown (severely) attached to, I have to admit that it's nice to occasionally leave the city like this and semi get away from it all. Given the fact that I am now capable of mobile internet browsing, well, I'm not exactly roughing it, now am I?

Christmas Day was all about eating. Today has been mostly about travel with a generous amount of eating still but now that the travel is over, it's not just time to relax. I wish I could go out of town with friends in this manner soon - it's a fun experience despite the stress related with travel. Then again, I can find something stressful about almost everything, haha. I realize that other than a few company outings and trips to Laiya earlier in the year, I haven't traveled as much as I have in previous years. This has resulted in significant cost-savings for sure, but then I guess even a stressed-out city junkie like me can miss travel, too. I don't think I'm feeling anything like wanderlust to any degree, but I am enjoying being out of town. Perhaps I need to put more effort in travel next year - the SmartBro should help with that.

I just downloaded Jason Mraz's "Selections For Friends", which is a collection of live performance of older songs. Add in the second CD of the limited edition "We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things" which has similar content, and I have a pretty chill playlist. It's funny how much I've fallen in love with Jason Mraz in recent years, sadly because of a friend who is no longer quite as friendly as we used to be. Ah well, I choose to believe that there's a reason for everything that happens in the life we live on this little ball of dirt and perhaps the loss of such a friend will make sense in the far future. In the meantime, I appreciate his gift to me - a deep love and appreciation for this silken-voiced singer who has a love for hats.

We're only going to be here until tomorrow and many would argue that I should be making the most of things by swimming or getting into some other activity that is more outdoor-ish or perhaps more specific to the area being visited. But then again anyone who has ever traveled with me will know that I'm perfectly happy finding a nice spot to read a book, a place to fire up the netbook to find internet signal or an area that I can explore with a camera. I'm not very sociable - so sue me. I just like exploring new locales in my own way, which often doesn't involve other people. Sure, eventually gathering with whoever else were traveling with later in the evening for drinks and such is fun and I'll be game for that, but the rest of the day will be dedicated to almost solitary exploration of the world around. But hey, that's me.

I definitely need to visit a beach next year. It doesn't have to be during the summer - I just need a chance to reconnect with the sand, get my feet wet and maybe get a bit of a tan as well. 365 days can be a very long span of time - I'm sure we'll figure something out, eh?

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Oh Pig, you poor little thing.

It's been a week since Jayson died, and as much as I miss him and wish he was still here with us, I have to admit I feel a LOT better now on so many levels. This is beyond coming to terms with grief - this is Jayson working through all of us to make us better. I think that at the end of the day, Jayson succeeded in more ways that he anticipated. I love you Baby - you did real good.

Yesterday was crazy fun and wild across two events - the department Christmas Party / Team-Building and my return to BED. This entry might get a little long, but I'll do my best to keep it tight.

First the company event. After spending all morning doing last-minute prize shopping for the event, barely getting any sleep and not remembering precisely where the Linden Suites were, I managed to make it to the party fairly early. Carlo and I scrambled to rip off the price tags off all the prizes and mementos. In time, the rest of the team arrived (well, a number of them) and the food came a little later and then the event started in earnest. I felt things were a tad awkward still in the beginning but soon folks from different teams started to mingle better and I think the little party may have achieved some of its goals. After some Magic Sing moments, we finally started the program, gave out the prizes and celebrated the winners, even when most of them didn't attend the party. Then it was off to the next event of the evening.

Tobie picked me up at Ortigas with his Canadian director friend Jordan in tow. Jordan had visited Tobie to hang out and talk over a few beers and we just had to drop him off near P.Burgos on our way to meet up with the rest of the gang. He's a really nice guy and I hope we get to hang out more in January before he leaves the country. Then it was off to Brian's |kitchengod| apartment. Yeah, I know right?

So when Tobie and I arrived, Keith was already there and were having a few beers. We joined them and waited for Ryan to come up and for Chris to arrive as well. Drinks were light, conversation decent and not too awkward and Tobie actually managed to pet Brian's dog, Miguel! Good job Tobie! =D Once everyone was assembled and Tobie and Brian had found time to talk, it was off to Malate to finally hit up BED.

Once there, we met up with Perry and the fun continued on and one. Bobby was there in his Ninoy glasses and Joseph |squishtoy|otherjoseph| was too and later on Kevin and Raf came along. I was really happy how things just went well, everyone was talking to one another at one point of the night or another (and I mean EVERYONE). As much as I hate to sound clinical about it, but you have to admit that you'd think that a night where your current partner and your ex are together is a recipe for disaster, but it didn't. This is why I feel Jayson was somehow with us this weekend - he helped us all see past out differences, let go of a lot of the bitterness and resentment so we could all start trying to be friends again. Well, that and a generous amount of alcohol really helped. Curse Keith and his Jager shots and curse me for enjoying my first Michael in months way too much by having another right after. We were all over the dance floor drinking, laughing, trying to talk despite the music and making utter fools of ourselves, but it was just GREAT.

Some notable quotes from the night include: (1) "I can't feel my face!" (2) "There, there...at least you're still hot." (3) "WP!"

I didn't realize how much I had missed partying and dancing with my friends from before and I'm partly kicking myself for not trying to reach out sooner. Well, I guess that's a lesson to be learned and for now all I can do is try to make it up to everyone and see what can be done to integrate my old life with my new one. I'm thankful I have such amazing friends! Oh life.

This hardly captures everything, but I didn't want to start rambling too much, hehe. I'm still a tad hung over now, enjoyed a few bowls of munggo that I made while I watch One More Chance on Cinema One while waiting for Tobie to get home from his company Christmas party. We just might go out again with Keith tonight, haha! Look out liver!

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Oh Pig, original luster is nothing compared to how you shine among friends.

What is up with today? I feel like so many people have been inviting me out today at the last minute. An officemate had plans of celebrating her birthday at Red Box earlier. A high school friend checked if I'd be in the Makati area tonight since he would be too. An online friend of mine just asked me if I'd be in Malate. Oh, and a client has flown in today and was also asking if I was hitting the clubs tonight. Weird - where were all of you when I wasn't doing anything on weekends? Unfortunately, today is a busy day - a Saturday gaming night. Oh yes, we haven't had one of these games in a while.

Tonight's group is different from what has become our usual Sunday group. This time around it's Sam and Aldwin with the currently visiting Marco guest-staring as a one-shot character that will probably turn into an NPC later on. I'm really excited about this game since we'll be playing Aeon/Trinity, which is a science fiction gaming universe created by White Wolf. So naturally as a science fiction geek, I'm pretty keen on the gaming potential of this series even though it has already been discontinued in the public market. This time around my character has the power of Electrokinesis with Technokinesis as my primary specialization with initial dots in Electromanipulation and Photokinesis. So this means that I can talk to machines more or less and I have initial abilities to generate a weak electric burst or just play with the lights. Yay.

Oh crap, the game is starting and I'm still writing this entry. And my flaw just forced me into an action I was trying to resist. Damn it.

This weekend promises to be geeky and gaming rich. There's the Trinity game tonight and tomorrow it's back to the usual Changeling / Promethean game. This is probably going to be the last game of the year - the next few weekends promise to be rather busy one way or another, so it becomes more prudent to avoid scheduling games during this period. But damn, it's going to be a long wait until the next gaming session. Boo.

We could explore the possibility of playing via Google Wave over the "break", although there's a fair amount of learning involved in transitioning to that gaming mode. Still, it's a pretty interesting possibility to explore, if only to get through the next few weeks without feeling the itch of gaming too much, haha. Yes, this is definitely an addiction of a sort.

And now I need to get back to the game.

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Oh Pig. This strip has horrible puns, and yet I can't stop reading! LOL

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 14,001 words exactly! I'm still about 2,600 words short of my daily target, but I'm still overwhelmed with how much I've accomplished thus far. I just need to tie up this chapter so I can move on to the next story segment. As always, the morbidly curious can check out my work-in-progress at The Gossamer Tower.

It's fun when work throws an interesting problem your way - the kind that really makes you think about how to solve it for practically the rest of your work shift. Last night was one of those days and I still find myself thinking about it. Call centers and other BPO companies are all about mass production - we aim to train agents to do the same job with relatively the same level of skill. If they fail to attain this, we try to coach and train them some more until there's no chances for improvement left. Then we let them go and hope they find a job that better suits their abilities. This particular challenge requires me to figure out a way to totally upgrade a particular group of agents to be totally different than how they started in terms of a job redefinition that we still need to come up with. When you decide to raise the bar, the trick is trying to define just what constitutes that higher level and what are the behaviors that will act as indicators that the desired change has happened. All that while still remaining profitable and working within what limited guidelines the client has provided.

Gods, I love working with really, really intelligent people. Even when they don't quite know how to express what they want.

Anyway, the training professional in me is joining forces with my tinker side and my problem solving side and my trying-to-think-outside-the-box-without-really-leaving-it side. The result is a LOT of interesting ideas and potential paths to take and I'll just have to figure out what to do in time.

Tobie and I did our weekly grocery run today and were shocked at how expensive shrimp is. I guess that just really goes to show what makes it such a special treat. We wanted to try something different this week and the dish that we have in mind is chop suey, or some other variation of stir fried vegetables. We bought a bunch of ingredients for it (thank you 10% off fresh produce Tuesdays!) and hopefully we'll get to run the experiment tonight or some other day this week. I also made sure to have ingredients of sinigang na bangus and of course the pork chops that have become our stable back-up food. Yay for food!

I've kinda forced Tobie to go through the Community episodes rather quickly. I say forced not because he doesn't like the show or anything, but more because he's still a bit shocked at the rate we're watching them. I tend to like finishing things in one go, especially when they come in 22 minute bite-sized chunks whereas he likes to take things a bit slower, giving time to savor whatever it is we're enjoying. Well, almost everything - ice cream melts and floats tend to bubble over, after all. We only started watching the show last Sunday and despite rationing, we're already finished with the 5th episode. Whee! Joel McHale is fun!

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Don't underestimate cows!

I've been coughing on and off for the past few weeks, which is definitely getting beyond annoying and more along the lines of being something to be concerned about. I know, I know, I really should have consulted a doctor by now and I'll definitely get around to it within this week. The straw that broke the camel's back, as it were, was how I felt last night before work. I wasn't running a fever but I was definitely feeling under the weather and my throat felt pretty bad - all gummy and stuff. My cough has definitely become productive and beyond the actual coughing, I'm desperately trying to cough out the phlegm that has built up.

So yeah, it was one of the rare occasions that I called in sick for work and opted to essentially work from home as needed. I always feel guilty about missing work, but the warning signs were definitely too strong to ignore this time around. I ended up staying home for the night and Tobie was nice enough to try and make me feel better. He rubbed Efficascent Oil on my chest and back like a parent would rub Vicks Vaporub and it generated a LOT of heat, which ultimately felt really good. It helped bring the coughing down, surprisingly enough, and so the rest of the night wasn't as bad despite the fact that I kind of smelled like an old person, haha!

I spent the rest of the night checking work email remotely, coughing, and eventually getting around to watching our copy of Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. Despite all the buzz, I was actually pretty disappointed with the direct-to-DVD movie. It ultimately felt like around 2 hours worth of scenes and sequences that could have just been repackaged as DVD extras instead of a standalone film product. I guess the having Olmos as director may not have been the most amazing way to handle this project. His vision of the BSG universe seems darker, cornily animated from a CGI perspective and with very different camera angles. It just wasn't the same experience.

My only other major highlight of my sick day other than sleeping was the fact that I got to unclog our kitchen drain using nothing more than baking soda, salt and boiling water. I was following the tips in my copy of Reader's Digest's Extraordinary Uses for Baking Soda and was a tad skeptical about their approach to clearing grease-clogged drains, but after I let the chemical concoction do its work, the drain was better than when we first moved in! Hurrah for the never ending wonder of baking soda solutions in the home!

Woke up before noon today and stepped out for errands with Tobie. I will have to try and nap again before going to work tonight. Yes, I am still going to work. I can't afford more than a day away.

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Thou shall not question the power of Google! 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.

First, Happy Birthday greetings to a high school classmate, Migs, and to a fellow geek, Ron! Happy Birthday to both of you...and good hunting! LOL

Things are definitely picking up at the office. The addition of my new role on top of my Training duties is certainly keeping me busy and I'm finding myself going home a tad later than normal these days. At least I don't feel overly tired because of all this. There's still that degree of fatigue, but it's the nice tired feeling you get when you really like what you're doing or when you really feel like you've accomplished meaningful things. The work is barely beginning and I know that things are going to get "worse" in a manner of speaking before they get really better. Here's to stressful, busy weeks ahead!

Random Bit #1 - I love the Integrated Gmail Firefox extension! It's the prefect add-on for the heavy Google user!

As I compose this entry, I'm waiting for this week's Glee to download so I can watch it later with Tobie before work. My downloading has gotten pretty organized in recent months, perhaps almost obsessively so, but it makes me a happy camper. After a year of owning a Terabyte drive, I'm down to about 130GB left and so this means that I need to either (1) delete unneeded files, (2) back-up less utilized files to DVDs or (3) buy another drive. I'm kinda torn about all this and I know that I also want to get around to buying a new camera this year. You know what that means - new digital megazoom camera = more photos = more storage needed. Whee! The data conundrum never ends!

And what's occupying the drive anyway? There's a decent amount of comic book scans around there for one, and then there's loads and loads of cartoons. There's my pre-existing library of photos taken with the past 3 digital cameras I shared with Brian before and there's a ridiculous amount of TV shows there too. Oh, and don't forget the movies, the specifically LGBT movies, the musicals and the ridiculous amount of porn. I know, I know, I should probably delete the not-so-fun porn to free up space. That would make the most sense - I'm just not quite ready to dedicate a day to checking on all those videos to judge if they're worth keeping or not. LOL

Ah, the things I end up talking about on this blog. The laughs never end, eh?

The weekend is just around the corner. Again. And I don't know what I want to do. Tobie and I were talking about prospective weekend plans and at the very least I think we'll step out to watch Julie & Julia, since apparently it's already out even though I was sort of expecting it to come out next week for some reason. Maybe we'll go hunting for shelves again but it's a major pay day weekend and I know a lot of malls are running 3-day sales. That's both a good an a bad thing since of course good deals are always useful in these tight economic times but I'm rarely if not never in the mood to wade through the masses of people who come out and occupy every possible space in malls across the metro. Yes, that's definitely not something I'd like forward to under any circumstance.

Even the weekly Sunday game is a tad affected by on-going events and this leaves us with time to possibly go out before the session. Maybe we'll visit Komik Kon on Sunday, but since it's at Megamall it might pay off to visit their branch of ACE Hardware to check for the shelves...gah, too many options!

Or we could just stay home again and watch more DVDs, clean up the Sietch more and perhaps get through the second season of Lost, which is my current retro TV project. The geekiness never stops - just like the aforementioned laughs! Har, har, snicker! =P

Random Bit #3 - There's going to be a Mythbusters episode all about Duct Tape! Coolness!

Okay, enough of this.

Until tomorrow.

Or later....

Random Bit #4 - I don't know where Random Bit #2 went. ROFL

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Rat may be a bastard, but he's a smart bastard!

Today's the birthday of everyone's Precious geeky, Gleeky Avengers-loving friend, NEEK! Happy Birthday, Niki! Keep on being the precious little you that only you can be because you're you!

I don't think I have officially noted in this blog that this week marks the beginning of an additional role for me at the office. No, it's not just a new role since it doesn't replace my old duties, but it's definitely something added to my plate. It's not a bad thing, really, at least in this case. You see, my director and I had been discussing this possibility for some time now and this week just marks the official beginning of me exploring the wonderful world of auditing and process compliance and improvement. The "and's" make sense if you say that last sentence with the right pausing.

This also means I now have three new direct reports, who are ironically former colleagues when I was still a member of the QA Department back in 2004. We have been working together on and off through the years but this marks the very first time that I'll actually be managing them, which is both interesting while somewhat daunting at the same time. I guess I just want to make sure I do things right and not make things become weird or something, certainly a common situation to consider when your former peers have become your subordinates, if only in terms of organizational structure. Of course I'm up to the challenge, along with all the other responsibilities that comes with the job.

Of course that still means I have all the fun Training stuff to worry about, and you know that's the fun that just never stops! Huzzah!

On my way home today I swung by Farmer's Market to hunt down some potatoes and carrots. Given that Shopwise didn't have them in stock yesterday and I really wanted to cook up some meals that required at least a potato or two, I ventured into the deep and managed to find vendors with the tubers in question. I'm pretty sure they probably charged the maximum amount possible, but that's capitalism for you. Supply and demand can be quite the pain in the nether regions.

I've now started to download all the episodes of Batman: The Brave and the Bold along with the entire run of Justice League / Unlimited. I can't quite explain it, but I'm in the mood for some animated superhero fun. Moreover, I'm really looking to see the animated depictions of the various supporting DC characters as opposed to the "big guns" so to speak. I think we've all had a more than healthy amount of the Trinity that is Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman and it's time for the likes of Black Canary and Green Arrow!

Oh, and like other musically inclined geeks, I'm just really looking forward to the Music Meister episode. Mwahahaha!

Tobie just left for work. The laundry has already been picked up. I just need to wash some of the dishes or something. The Sietch is all quiet now.

Well, at least until he gets back. =D

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As if Duck wasn't cool enough...LOL