Current NaNoWriMo Word count: 44,784 words. This is it ladies and gentlemen - this weekend is going to be do or die for me in terms of my bid to finish NaNoWriMo this year. If you had asked me to write a 50.000 word novel a year ago, I probably would have said that you're insane and that I could never manage that given how I had been struggling with getting back into writing over the past few years. But here I am, roughly 5,000 words away from that goal and I've never felt this energized towards writing in years. I'm sure the novel in itself probably sucks and it's hardly anywhere near something that I'd think of as being one of my better works, but it's there and it exists and I'm doing to finish this bastard this weekend.

Of course this translates into not going out tonight or even tomorrow and pretty much just dedicating as much time as possible to getting it done, which I'm prepared to do. It also helps that Tobie is also writing a NaNoWriMo novel and thus we're both going to try and cross that 50,000 word mark together. We have barely 2 days left to get it done - we can do this!

Oh, but I have more news than just my NaNoWriMo target.

Today Tobie and I stepped out to pick up a few supplies from SM Cubao, which inevitably means going around the mall to look at stuff. I picked up two more Transformers today - the Animated versions of Jazz and Swoop, to help beef up my Autobot bench. They mark my 13th and 14th Transformers purchases for the year, which pretty much outweighs my total toy purchases within the previous 5 years or more. Of course I now actually earn enough money to buy toys like this as a major factor to this purchasing change, but in general I just seem to be at a better place in terms of my comfort with buying toys again. Plus they were only P300 each, so why not, right?

The major purchase this weekend was one of my tech goals for the year - getting a netbook. After much deliberation over the past few months, I finally went out to buy an Asus EEE PC 1005HA. I got the Windows 7 version with 2GB DDR RAM and the slightly larger 250GB hard drive to boot. I'm pretty excited about getting this fully set up, but of course with the need to accomplish NaNoWriMo, I'm sticking to using the desktop for now. Typing on that small keyboard is going to take a lot of getting used to and I can't afford to deal with a learning curve just yet. Maybe later.

Tobie helped me pick up a decent back for it as well - it's one of those single strap slings that don't really look like laptop bags given the number of pockets and compartments. I'm really happy with this purchase and I can't wait to get it fully configured for my needs.

Now if only I could get my hands on a Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 before next Saturday's company Christmas party...

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Scratch Fury! Calvin and Hobbes reference! Squee!

First up, a very Happy Birthday to gaming friend (and soon to be psychic prostitute), Sam! A very, Happy Happy Birthday to you! I can't wait for our Trinity game to start! Wheee!

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 41,085 words. With luck, I won't be too busy at work tonight so I can sneak in some more writing. There are only 3 days left until the end of the competition this weekend is going to be do or die for me. Gah! But I remain confident that I can manage this and I'll be able to pull this off. I swear I will! Go, go, NaNoWriMo! =D

Work was a lot busier than expected, but then I suppose that's normal given I didn't go to work last Wednesday. There were long meetings, various consultations, challenging people to perform even better than they are now and thinking about 28 Google Wave invites and who would actually try my little contest.

One more work shift tonight. I can do this.

It's hard being a member of the support teams in a call center. Not just any support team, but one of the teams that have stronger operational ties like Training and Quality Assurance. The challenge with such groups is that holidays become a thing of the past for the most part. Here's what I mean:

When you're in Operations, like when you're an agent, if there are no calls, then you don't have work. This normally means that a lot of local holidays get trampled on while you at least you get to enjoy the holidays of the home country that you support. US-focused call centers get Thanksgiving off while other groups get to honor holidays in the UK or whatever. It's just how things go.

When you're in a more traditional support department like HR or Recruitment, you tend to get the local holidays off in order to honor your nice little daytime schedules and to save on holiday pay. You don't get the US holidays off since it doesn't make sense for how your job is defined.

Support teams like Training aren't so lucky, at least in terms of my working experience. When you're in Training, as long as there's a class, you have to work. Since we are not directly tied to Operations by things like call volume and such, training classes can always continue regardless of whether or not Operations has work. We also can still work despite local holidays since we have hard targets that we have to meet in terms of graduation dates and naturally we must continue to deliver quality agents to Operations. The best that we can manage is to offset holidays by declaring 11 hour work shifts for a 4-day work week or offsetting class schedules to Tuesday - Saturday in order to avoid a Monday holiday or whatever. It's just how things go in our industry.

So it's hard to figure out which holidays you'll get to enjoy, if any at all. More and more we seem to have acquired programs that have work even on major holidays like Christmas and New Year, and thus the expectation of coming to work seems to get even worse. It's a hard life but somehow the higher pay is supposed to help make up for the stress and loss of personal time.

June of next year will mark my seventh year in the call center industry, and I don't think I'll ever get fully used to this consequence of our jobs. Oh well.

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Do NOT mess with gamers while they're gaming under ANY circumstances. =P

Current NaNoWriMo Word Count: 21,602 words. Still short of goal, but it was a lot more than I expected to finish before heading out for Saturday night.

Last night was wicked awesome! What started out as simple dinner plans with a good friend turned into a really fun night! Naturally, alcohol was involved.

First, Tobie and I met up with Deo as scheduled at Gateway for dinner and conversation. Initial plans were to find a place where we could both eat and drink at Cubao, but given Deo was famished, we ended up at the Chicken Inasal at SM Cubao. We had a LOT of rice and jokes, banter and ridiculous conversation about school stereotypes, old friends and GLEE! Obviously episode 9, "Wheels," was just THAT good that it really impressed all of us so much. We topped off the dinner portion of the night with Blizzards from Dairy Queen and then it was off to Malate for some proper drinking.

We arrived at Malate REALLY early - like just before 12:00am early, and naturally the place was just starting to get busy. Nico was already there and so we he joined us for initial drinks as the rest of the crew eventually arrived. The night just continued on and Deo and I had fun, um, enjoying the performances of the "chorva" dancers (take note: male AND female dancers!), commenting on passers-by and of course the much needed OMG-I-know-that-guy moments. Of course there was even more drinking, dancing, playing iPhone games in the dark, photos and even dirty ice cream (good job, Fritz!)!

It had been AGES since I last went out drinking on a Saturday night outside of major event weekends and so it was quite a change of pace for me to get back into the Saturday night groove. The VIP area at O bar doesn't get as full as the main area and so I think as long as it remains open, Saturday nights at Malate might become a lot more reliable.

Oh, and just as we were going home, it turned out Jayson was at Malate too! We had a little time to catch up, exchange hugs and well wishes and of course the regrets that we didn't get to party together and the promises to make up for that some time in the future.

In other words, last night was just great! Perhaps we need to go out more...but not necessarily every weekend, haha. I might not be ready for that just yet.

Well, Mahar is here now and we're just chilling until Adrian and Nabs arrive for the weekly game. In the meantime, I'm going to try to get some NaNoWriMo writing done as I upload the photos from last night and perhaps a Geeky Guide entry to boot!

Oh, and I don't know why I decided to start using CAPITAL LETTERS in today's entry, haha. I guess this is part of my post-drinking behavior. =P

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Now THAT's rocking it old school! LOL

Hey, it's Guy Fawkes Day! As in "Remember, remember the fifth of November..." and all that. Let's all throw a stuffy man on the fire!

I got a little writing in since my last update, and that has brought me up to 6,379 words. Given it's already November 5, I'm technically behind my daily target by almost 2,000 words, so I guess I better keep this update light.

It's a good thing I got more than enough rest yesterday since I pretty much burned through all of that today. My work shift starting last night was full of meetings, reports, short coaching sessions and a little NaNoWriMo writing when I was on break. It's a good thing I have something like NaNoWriMo to escape to when things get too stressful at the office - there's nothing quite like escaping to the worlds of imagination in your head to help de-stress for a while.

To top it all off, my day ended with back-to-back meetings, and you know how draining those can be. It's a small miracle that I was able to make it home in time without energy to remind Archer that I love him, then cook breakfast.

No new Glee this week. Bugger.

Breakfast was nothing fancy - I cooked one of those Pampanga's Best Fatless Tocino packs ("Tastes just like ham!") and decided to experiment a bit with the egg. Instead of my usual scrambled eggs with onions, salt, pepper, oregano, basil and thyme, I decided to try adding in some okra slices and was pretty impressed with the results. Tobie liked the food too so I guess it wasn't that weird. I'm learning to better proportion my use of spices as time passes by and despite the variety, I think I'm developing a taste for what works for me. I'm scared to have people other than Tobie try the food though - my cooking may not be as decent as Tobie makes me believe. Then again, we're both guys and we'll eat almost anything, right? =P

I'll end things here for now - I need to get some more writing done before I call it a "night" and head for bed. This cold, rainy weather is going to make it nice and cozy today...if I had Archer with me. Since I don't, I guess this means me waking up in the middle of my sleep to relieve myself because of the cold and spending the rest of the time making do with the blanket.

No worries. He'll be back soon enough.

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Damn you idiot, narrow-minded voters of America!

I haven't made much NaNoWriMo progress since my last LJ entry, but at least I'm up to 5,369 words now. I'll be posting regular updates on my NaNoWriMo progress at the start of every LJ entry from here on, and I'll probably compose at least one entry a week about it on the Geeky Guide. All these little thing to keep me focused. If you're interested in reading the story in-progress, you can read it here: The Interrogation.

I'll be returning tonight after a timely vacation leave last week and my taking advantage of the holiday yesterday. I spent most of my night stressing out over work, however, given I didn't have all the data that I needed for my report due to delays from those who were supposed to send it along. Seriously, why can't people respect deadlines? Timeliness is extremely important, especially in an industry like call centers.

Otherwise, last night was light. I spent a fair amount of time working on my novel, along with taking time to write a few more Geeky Guide entries for this week. This whole NaNoWriMo effort is pretty interesting and I like how it's driving me to write. It's probably helping that my competitive nature is also coming out these days given that Tobie is also making a NaNoWriMo attempt this year. There's nothing like having someone to compare your progress against to push you further and that's pretty much what Tobie's doing for me. I mean come on, I turn around and I see him typing away, adding to his zombie story. How is that supposed to make me feel? But it's friendly competition so far. Naturally I want both of us to "win" NaNoWriMo this year and it's not an actual race.

Although I wouldn't mind finishing my novel first, hehe.

Tonight we're catching the local premiere of Inglorious Basterds right before I head off to work. I was lucky enough to win the tickets via Neworlds.ph. So now I have an official T-shirt (even the tag says Inglourious Basterds!) and a poster (which was slightly beat up, but still works) and of course the actual tickets. I'm hoping I get to juggle my schedule today well enough - I've been awake since around 12, which is a bad thing since it means I may pass out in the middle of my work shift tonight. Oh joy.

Then again, I can always try to stay away by working on my novel some more. Yeah, that's the ticket.

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Them's fighting words! It's on! LOL

So many birthdays on Halloween! Happy Birthday to fellow NWA geeks Carl and Hec, to one of the smartest young men I've ever encountered online, Haochi and to a work friend from LA, Jeff! Happy Birthday to all of you and a very Happy Halloween to the rest of the world!

We lost power at my mom's house sometime in the morning - I don't exactly know when since I pretty much collapsed after being awake for more than 30 hours of being awake. I was a tad sweaty but not too sweaty given at least it was relatively cool in the room where I bunked for the night. Oddly enough, I slept on a couch beside a wall full of airsoft guns. Seriously.

The rest of the day was light. Instead of leaving the house to cool off at the mall, which was probably what most people opted to do given the power outages, we ended up staying home playing board games. Yes, we're one of THOSE kinds of families. We started out with a parents vs kids round of Scrabble, which my siblings and I totally lost despite our best efforts. Then we tried this other game that's like modified Tic-Tac-Toe, but on different levels entirely. Then we ended up playing Word Factory / Boggle for the rest of the afternoon amidst four Shakey's pizzas. Family fun!

My lesson for today is that I'm really not that great at spatial reasoning. When it comes to positioning wooden pegs strategically or just trying to create words out of jumbled letters, I'm just not as quick or as good as I'd like to be. My head still hurts a bit after spending all those hours trying to come up with words. Oh well.

Now I'm trying to figure out if some of my original plans for the evening are pushing through, like meeting up with high school friends for drinks. Tobie and I are also stressing over what to wear tonight given we're attending Halloween event/s tonight as well. How does one deal with a Bollywood theme? LOL

Plus I still haven't unboxed my Transformers! Crazy!

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Happy Geeky Halloween, Everyone!!!

It's sad how every little change in the weather has us all on edge. Sad, but still unavoidable given the circumstances. A lot of our thoughts inevitably drift towards trying to comprehend the scale of last weekend's disaster while alternating things with the coming storms projected to pass through the country in the coming weeks. The slightest hint of rain, the first signs of darker clouds or just the increased humidity that makes us all think of rain has a lot of people more nervous than normal. This is really the kind of environment that will turn anyone into a believer in the divine. I keep talking about the inevitable shift towards fatalism given these conditions, and that is not a critique. It's just an observation of how human behavior tries to cope with such situations.

People truly amaze me right now. It's one thing to talk about hoping people will do good instead of expecting them to fail in terms of work performance and it's completely another thing to see it taking place all over the city, nay the country even. There's so much volunteering going all over the place and the scenes are enough to warm anyone's heart. Today I found out that the company is trying to figure out ways to extend additional funds to our most affected employees who are still without homes while at the same time releasing up to 50% of our 13th month pay way ahead of schedule to help everyone rebuild. It's wonderful how we're all pulling together in the face of adversity and we're doing so in a pretty strong manner.

Tobie and I were talking about this the other night in terms of how proud we all must feel to see our countrymen doing more than their share in all this, trying to go beyond what is expected. I remember all the footage of Katrina that made everyone seem so downtrodden and beaten after that hurricane. But now amidst the despair and the sadness, there's a lot of reason to hope for the country. Sure, we can't really trust the government for these sorts of things but at least we as a people are rising above this challenge together, and that's more important than any person in a position of power. When a nation can come together like this even just for this period of time, well, it speaks of pretty amazing power just waiting to be unlocked. Hopefully we'll find the right leaders soon enough, the kind that will truly inspire us to greatness and to be much more than we are now.

I don't care if news of the next disaster is probably going to take the limelight and make a lot of people forget about our plight - that's inevitable. This is not about showing the world what we can do but more importantly it's about showing ourselves what we're capable of. That's a much more important message to drive.

Totally unrelated story - I just got a call from Bayantel about my wireless landline phone. Apparently I've already reached a year's subscription and that makes me eligible for a P100 discount everyone month for the next 12 months. Of course the catch is for me to agree to stay on for an additional year or risk a penalty, which is essentially me extending my commitment in exchange for P1200. It's not a bad thing - US telecommunications companies do it all the time. It's just interesting to note how local companies are finally starting to learn from their foreign counterparts and are actually doing something to retain their customers. This definitely has pros and cons - I should know given I've worked in the back end of such environments. Either way, it's interesting and I'd like to see how this develops further as time goes along.

So yeah, I agreed to the deal.

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This is so Big Bang Theory S03E02! Schnapps! LMAO!

It's official - our QC site has a confirmed case of the infamous AH1N1 "swine flu". Despite assurances that most cases thus far have turned out to be rather mild, just knowing of the infection naturally gets one nervous no matter what and you find yourself trying to somehow "breathe less" when walking the hallways or developing even more OCD tendencies such as rubbing down my desk and my PC desktop with alcohol. Oh, and don't get me started on how fussy I've gotten about washing my hands - I bet the guards must think I have a bladder problem considering how often I end up in the bathroom. Better safe than sorry, that's what I say.

The company has their own set of precautions of course such as having anyone with flu-like symptoms immediately report to the clinic and some department heads have started to advise folks to wear masks at the office (my director included). One the stranger ideas has been to check everyone's temperature as they enter the building with a laser scanner. While theoretically this sounds like a great idea, I'd rather they use a slightly more invasive ear thermometer as opposed to the laser gun-style reader they're using now, which is the same one they use to check if the building air conditioning is at the right level. Seriously, those things aren't exactly properly calibrated for reading human body temperature, right?

At least they mean well.

Tobie and I seem to have pretty much started to establish a pretty decent routine by now. Given our opposing schedules and his need to go back to Parañaque every other day, we're pretty much figured out how to align our schedules such that we're actually awake for certain periods of time while we're both at the Sietch and we get to be more cost-effective by having meals together as opposed to eating independently. It may not seem like much, but it certainly goes a long way.

This weekend promises to be less busy than the last one, so I wonder what geeky adventures we'll be getting ourselves into. For Saturday I'm going to pay another trip home to the folks - I live near enough for it to become more cost-effective to visit - also given the fact that Tobie has work on Saturdays, and that means going South. Sunday is generally free, so that's a good day for watching more movies, perhaps finishing some of the TV shows we've started watching in recent weeks or maybe attack those comic books that are in dire need of organizing. That means buying cases for all those DVDs, which means possibly visiting a place where DVDs are sold, which more likely means buying even more DVDs. The dangers of piracy, haha. Oh the temptations indeed...

Oh, and we're finished the first 9 episodes of Lie to Me with only 3 to go. It's a pretty interesting series even though I don't necessarily believe in everything the present as part of Dr. Lightman's amazing micro-expression interpretation method for lie detection, but it does make for good entertainment. He's a House-like personality placed into a more crime / mystery solving genre. Yes, he's just as obnoxious at times and it helps that he's played by Tim Roth, who is really, really good at looking like a mad man.

I should probably bring the laundry down today before bed. That would be prudent.

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Oh yes, the Sims just gives one too much control over...things. =P