updates

i used to have a lot to say about a lot of things. and then i stopped wanting to blog and each time i try to blog, my brain freezes.

i've been up to many things lately. i'm like the super juggler who's juggling a lot of things all at once. i'm riding the highs and digging the lows. i have a lot to complain about if given the chance (actually, no one's stopping me... i just don't want to) but i choose not to. like i said, i'm riding the waves like a professional surfer-- balancing my left and right arm and praying to God that i won't fall off.

while i was gone i did a lot of things:

1. went to Xaymaca two times.
- i love Xaymaca because it's so cool over there no matter how small the place. i love reggae. if i can't go to the beach, at least make the music come to me or make me feel like i'm at the beach.


i look tall here! HAHAHA!

2. went to the beach then to bataan
- it was with family for my father's work. it was an outing that we all looked forward too. the beach was fun-- hot as expected but i didn't swim because there were too many people. after zambales, my family and i headed for bataan where my parents' friends took us to their farm. it was awesome! there were sooooo many pigs. i saw the biggest pig i've ever seen in my whole life.


with my sister and ate yen.


pigsss!

3. went to that Java in Manila conference for work at Makati Shangri La and got a free backpack
- HAHA! that's stupid because i had to include that i got a backpack. but it's cool because you can fold it into a pouch and then transform it into a huge backpack. i got bullied (HAHA! KIDDING!) by my workmate and his friend by being a "racist" it's a joke, of course. compared to their "Brokeback" comment, they're MEANER!

4. rediscovered my love for badminton and realized that i still know how to play
- went to play badminton with alej after the conference. i thought i forgot how to play but lo and behold! i still have pretty good reflexes and i still know how to play. i am now officially addicted. i'm playing again tomorrow. woohoooo! i'm going to kick my boyfriend's ass.



enjoy life! if shit happens, let it. no one promised you a rose garden. :)

migraine rants and the duck project

i'm not feeling well. i'm having another one of my migraine attacks. i had one last night. and now i'm having one again, it's really annoying. it's sad how i have to rub Omega to my temples constantly. whether the effects are psychological or really effective, what matters is that i get to smell that scent. i'm addicted to the smell of tiger balm, omega, and white flower. i think i should close my eyes and just lie in bed until it goes away. i hate this feeling. grr.

so i joined an LJ community (Duckiepics) and someone posted there about The Duck Project. it's so cool. so i joined. i wrote an email so they can send me a duck project rubber duck and then take photos of the little duck traveling around. isn't that crazy cool? it reminds me of the gnome in Amelie who traveled and took pictures of himself. hehehe. i'm going to subic this weekend. maybe i can bring one of my ducks with me and create my own duck project--gail's pet rubber duck travels. cool! ;)

who says you have to be a little kid to play with cool toys like rubber duckies? :P

most importantly...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, INA GIRL!!!

i miss you!!!

return of the duckyholic

i watched Fighting Temptations again this afternoon after a nap. i love the movie! the first time i saw it, it was just so-so. but i love it now! especially the finale song He Still Loves Me (link available for just 7 days, i think). that song made me cry, no kidding.

I'm not perfect
Yes I do wrong
I'm trying my best
But it ain't good enough
Shunned by the world
If I don't succeed
Cuz I ain't good
But He still loves me

anyway...

there are four new additions to my ducky family who lives on the 2nd level of my four-level bookshelf! :) alej gave me a pack of four rubber duckies yesterday:


the basketball ducky photo didn't come out clear. hehe! so this is just three of them for now :)


a group picture! HAHA!

and of course, the Brokeback Ducky!!!

amen to this!

"Our lives are not determined by what happens to us, but by how we react to what life brings to us, by the attitude we bring to life. A positive attitude causes a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and outcomes. It is a catalyst...a spark that creates extraordinary results." -Karen Faith

(from one of the bosses at work. it's her (karen) email signature)

Idlip by Imago

"in the arms of make believe
sleep will set you free..."

i had an interesting day with my mother. we met up with her friend in makati, had lunch, and then looked around for stuff at the mall. i saw an LJ friend at mexicali in glorietta but i was too chicken to walk up to her and introduce myself. HAHA! LJ sightings are interesting, i tell you. this is my second one. anyway, i was really tired earlier. i swear i really wanted to crawl under the covers badly because i woke up real early just to go with my mother to her lunch thing. but after slathering Cetaphil on my face and splashing water on it, i am now wide awake. the water was too cold and i'm too stubborn to follow my drowsiness. so here i am, still awake. ack.

i've been tinkering with friendster a lot these days. i know, i'm pathetic. i am now one of the people i used to ridicule before (okayy, i'm sorryyyy!). i have no more sites to visit, blogs to read, or stuff to do on the Internet. this is the sole reason why i went to YouTube.com. oh, that and the fact that i haven't seen Keane's Somewhere Only We Know music video.

this video is from Imago. it's called Idlip. i love this song because it's a good song to listen to before falling asleep. and the lyrics are poetic and beautiful. i didn't know there was a video. never been an OPM fan since 2 years ago so this is very new to me.

ta-da! enjoyyy! and now i shall go to bed. good night!

the wisdom of Winnie the Pooh and Mahatma Ghandi

as a child, i had a collection of videotapes my father would buy me during his trips to bangkok. you see, we were living in myanmar that time and there weren't new videos of cartoons that i liked to watch. so i collected them all. papa introduced me to Casper, Tom and Jerry, the Warner Bros. cartoons, and Disney cartoons. everyday after school after taking my nap (mama said it would make me grow faster with a glass of milk in the evening), i'd ask ate to pop the Winnie and Friends tape for me into the VCR player. i'd sit on the floor with my head tilted to the t.v. screen and giggle at the sight of Winnie and his friends.

while browsing quotations from a website, i came across quotes from Pooh bear.

From Pooh Bear:

“A little Consideration, a little Thought for Others, makes all the difference.”

“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.”

“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.”

“Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you. And all you can do is go where they can find you.”

“You can't always sit in your corner of the forest and wait for people to come to you... you have to go to them sometimes.”



my childhood will always be a place in my heart which will be a source of happiness. no matter what mood i am in, when i look back and recall growing up as a child i think i did almost everything. and life was really happy. it was what others would call a "happy and shiny place". that was my world when i was a child-- lots of playing, laughter, cartoons, candies, traveling, seeing the world, meeting new people, spending time with family, sharing memories with friends... it was the best. i wouldn't trade it for anything.

winnie the pooh was a huge part of it too. i wouldn't adore animals and plush stuffed toys as i do now without winnie the pooh. :)


while surfing the quotations website, i also stumbled across Ghandi's. i remember coming across the quote "Be the change you wish to see in the world." i realized that you can't just stand back and watch the world crumble and then complain about this or that. you should take action too. i am taking baby steps. i don't believe i can make that big of a difference in the world nor do i believe that with just one little helpless girl like me, there will be no more suffering in the world. of course there will be. but i do believe that with one little girl like me, there will be one less soul in pain. it's like the starfish story. do you know that? well, you should.

i am taking baby steps. my only wish is for the world to conspire to make my good intentions come true. and i don't want people expecting a lot from me. i'm taking one day at a time.


From Ghandi:

“In doing something, do it with love or never do it at all”

“An eye for an eye leaves everybody blind.”

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

“Where there is love there is life.”

the grammar police of the blogging world can give me a ticket for violations. HAHA! check out the entry below. "kicked back and relax"? c'mon! HAHA! and "bottles of bear"? HAHA! i'm laughing over that one. sorry. my brain malfunctions when i lack sleep especially after a night of mad videoke singing my lungs out even if i was never THE singer.

anyway, something tells me i'm going to gain a lot of unwanted flabs this summer. i hate sounding like a ditz but when you down mugs of triple chocolate ice cream with sliced bananas and then crave for devil's food cake from the chocolate kiss cafe, you're bound to gain unwanted pounds, right? this calls for excercise. according to my cardiologist, i don't need to excercise because i'm not fat (you know how happy this made me feel) but he still suggests that i need to engage in a lot of aerobic excercises because i am hypertensive. and if i don't want this disease to become a lifestyle disease (a disease that affects daily life wherein a person needs to do alterations to live a normal life), i should excercise to keep my heart healthy and my blood pressure normal. that sucks, doesn't it? diabetes is also in the blood and being the youngest of two, i am bound to inherit the disease. of all inheritances, this has got to be the worst thing to inherit.

i've been listening to a lot of bob marley, beachy chill out songs lately. cos i have no choice but to bring the beach ambience here because i'm stuck in the city for at least a few days. but bob marley has been very accomodating :) and kokomo by the beach boys, of course. that song makes me want to pack my bags and teleport to the beach.

ho-hum. i am aware that i'm really random right now. shows how much i want to rant yet does not really have anything signficant to rant about. shoot me, please.

it has been a while since i kicked back and relax. yesterday i had FUN hanging out with high school friends and their girl friends. i think it's cool that we still keep in touch like that. we went to see Happy Madison's production Grandma's Boy. it's low budget but i liked the movie nevertheless and it's related to adam sandler. who could decline watching a movie like that? HAHA!

then it was Crib Grill with darwin and his girlfriend Cara. i had two bottles of bear, a bottle of red bull, and a shot of tequila. it has been a while since i last drank and i figured there was a reason to celebrate because i'm finally done with thesis. i had a great time with the magic sing too! HAHA! videoke kicks ass and i kick ass too because i got two 100 scores, two 99 scores, and a 96! OH WOW! hahaha! alej sang too! *confetti*. ah well, good times. we stayed there until it was 2.30am and my facial muscles already hurt from laughing too hard.

so now it's green tea with two teaspoons honey for me to detoxify my system from all that alcohol. the tequila was yummy, though. :9

things i learned this week

- shit happens even to the most undeserving of people.

- SPSS (that stat program) is not hard afterall! i worship the gods who created the program for making my life a million times easier in tabulating survey data. phew!

- my thesis A Research on HIV/AIDS Among Filipino Seafarers is not just a thesis anymore. it's the fruit of my dying thirst to find out what stakeholders are doing in HIV/AIDS awareness and intervention. plus, writing it is an experience i will never forget. i now have a strong DESIRE to do something about it and a hope that it will contribute something to society rather than just gather dust on the shelves of theses at the UP Manila CAS library. my practicum experience working on HIV/AIDS at PGH and this thesis has turned me into an HIV/AIDS advocate.

- the more scarier thing than HIV/AIDS itself are the prejudices on the virus.

- GOD answers prayers even if you didn't expect him to hear you THAT FAST.

- caffeine will always be my drug.

- i can live without internet but i still need the wonderful technology of electronic mail.

- i can live without my ipod.

- i CANNOT live without writing.

- i can live without sleeping until noon.

- i am always drowsey.

- i will always have fat days.

- i want to throw everything in my closet away and buy NEW stuff to wear not because i'm materialistic or ditzy that way but because i need change.

- i will always be a pandora's box waiting to be opened.

- i will always be tired.

- my family will always be my life support system.

- i have awesome parents.

- i have a wonderful sister.

- i have a wonderful partner in crime who tolerates my being a brat as much as i tolerate his being a brat. mu ha ha ha.

- even if i don't become a full-time social worker i will always have a place for social work inside of me.

- i tried not to overanalyze to much the past few weeks and i'm feeling way way way better already :)

- i will always turn back to reading, sugar, and caffeine to make me feel high.

- i will always be a movie buff.

- i will always be the girl who liked to gaze at the stars.

- i will always be the girl who looks normal but is weird REALLY.

from my thesis adviser sir Roli

My Thesis*
John Hays

The Lord is my thesis adviser; I shall not err.
He arranges for me to be published in the
respectable journals; he teaches me how
to use the reductio argument.
He enshores my validity; he leads me by
the classical logic, for the truth's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of
the existence proofs, I will fear no contradiction;
for he edits my work.
The Axiom of Choice and Zorn's Lemma**, they comfort me.

He invites a colloquium on classical analysis,
for my participation, in the absence of the constructivists;
He frequently and approvingly abstracts me
in Mathematical Reviews;
my reputation flourishes internationally.
Surely, honors and grants shall follow me
all the days of my career,
and I shall rise in the ranks of the
Department,
to Emeritus.

Amen.

*Source: http://www.getamused.com/jokes/0101144.html
**Lemma- (mathematics), a proven statement used as a stepping-stone towards the proof of another statement; (linguistics), the canonical form of a word.

__________

5 more days, people. mad researching and begging of respondents to answer my survey. begging starts tomorrow. april 7, do or die.

80 pages and counting, kaya ko 'to!

to Dei

do you remember that April Fool's when you and your little sister Dana played a mean trick on me? you called home and said that Dana was rushed to the hospital. and i asked you why with a frantic voice and you just said she was rushed there. i lost all energy to speak and then you said you remembered why. so i asked. and you said ".... because it's April Fool's Day!". argh. that was the meanest joke ever.

we have lots of memories made way back in high school. i miss that. i miss hanging out with you and your siblings and listening to your infectious laugh that never failed to make me laugh until my tummy hurts too! i'll hopefully see you next summer.

happy birthday, dei! i love ya! you're our original adopted sister! HAHAHA!