Sleep all...sleep all day!!!

Yesterday was a blast! I'd been used to my birthdays' being uneventful (because it would usually fall on a Holy Week) but my day turned out very differently yesterday. up:gucci handbags

Well, people at work got me a really nice surprise. They decorated my workstation with photos of me and my closest "emotero" teammates. Then by lunch time, they surprised me with a birthday cake and why I say it was different is that I blew a candle this year. Thanks to them, I especially like the banana creamy cheesecake which was really addicting. =)

I had to leave the office at 2pm so I could make it to my sister's graduation ceremony at PICC. There were more than 800 graduates from Artlets and the ceremony lasted for more than 3 hours! I was nearly bored to death since my seat assignment was different from my parents' and I had to sit alone at the gallery. It was a big surprise that I saw Romi at the plenary hall lobby and we spent few good hours talking about friends and catching up on each other's comings and goings. We could have talked more but we were with our folks and we had different post-graduation engagements.

Amazingly, I met other familiar schoolmates from way back college and elementary days whose younger brothers and sisters were also part of the graduating batch. It just felt great talking to these people and seeing them how they matured (and finally made sense) after all these years!

Dinner with family was nice, too. I figured it had been months since we sat down together over dinner so last night was very special for the four of us. I remember when we were kids, our parents would take us to a Sunday afternoon cruise at the Manila Bay area (used to be a quite famous activity/attraction, which for some reason I didn't like much), so I guess my parents liked it that we decided to go to Harbor Square because they still find this area of the Metro one charming place. Friends from high school, who've gotten really close to my sister, also celebrated with us.

It's great that I've reconnected with a bunch of people from my past and such a wonderful encounter has kept me grounded. It was a great birthday present. =)

It was a fun, fun night! I'm grateful for my family and friends, whom I realize I cannot compromise with anything material. To all my friends who called and sms'd but I didn't get to return thankful words to, I ultimately take this chance to say I'm so blessed to have you as friends. In spite of all the constant stress and heartaches that life embitters me with, I'm still inspired to live my life to the fullest. I now pray that God blesses me with more years to celebrate life with you. Love you, guys! Take care and God bless you all!

Gah!!! I'm beginning to hate Thursdays! I'm compelled to stay late in the office to participate in weekly telecons with peers from the UK and Costa Rica. up:gucci bags

Good thing is I'll only wait for a week till this project is (hopefully) done; bad thing is major conflicts just got uncovered within these last two weeks...Hayrreett!!!

I told friends that I wouldn't go out last weekend since I had not fully recovered from whatever viral infection I caught from Metro Manila's germ-infested troposphere, but then I was deeply moved by Anj's text message...("Kaliliit lang ng mikrobyo nagpatalo ka! Puksain mo sila sa pamamagitan ng iyong lakas ng loob!!!" )

I rushed to Eastwood around 8:30, and few minutes past 9, I was with the rowdiest bunch at Teryaki Boy. Crazy night, really! Anj and Paloys, of course, didn't fail to notice the Pocholos, the Stephanies, and their yayas. (Sa kaingayan natin , napansin nyo ba na nahiya si Fria para sa 'tin? haha! I remember the same feeling I had at Carl's Jr about 5 years ago. hehehe! )

I promised a third of EHS to post pictures from last Saturday. Ang payat mo na, Paloys!!! Pictures to follow...=up:gucci handbags)

Got this from a friend who's now based in the UK. BLOODY funny (can't think of a fancier term...) =)

Opinion: Absurdia
By Carla Montemayor
Newsbreak Contributing Writer

The King's English and I
Sheffield

I have always had a love affair with English, and for that reason I write in this language. I've encountered Singlish (the okay lahs of Singapore), Deep South English (brung and y'all), Japanese English (no R's), Ilocano English (all R's), and I have never had major surprises until now with English English, the way they speak it here in the UK. It's not that I was ignorant of its peculiarities. I had read British authors, watched British films, and spoken with British people long before I got here. All that, however, still did not prepare me for the shock of the colloquial.For starters, there's the verbose politesse. The British will not just say "thanks," they will invariably say, "Thank you very much indeed," or "Thank you ever so much." Ever so much na, indeed pa. How does one reply adequately to that? "You are profoundly welcome from the deepest recesses of my heart"? Sometimes I feel like bowing. Then there are the dramatic exclamations. Things are never just "okay" or "nice" or even "great"; they are "splendid," "fantastic," and "brilliant."

It's overwhelming and somewhat suspicious for someone whose own language is restrained in the deployment of superlatives. Maganda (beautiful), magaling (good), and ang galing-galing (really good) are about all we can bring ourselves to describe anything we're impressed with, although we do make up for it with emphatic gestures and lively vocal tones. The British, when pronouncing something as being "superb," will make the most frugal of lip movements and the slightest of eyebrow lifts.

Requests are bound to be long-winded. "You don't suppose you could turn the light on, do you, that is if you don't mind and if it's not too much trouble, of course?" I'm tempted to reply with a similar treatise, but I just say, yes, I suppose the Filipino CAN! But CANS are not in vogue here. My housemate asked me for a TIN opener, not a CAN opener. And we're all supposed to throw our trash in the trash BIN, not the trash CAN. This must have confused the English when Bin Laden burst into the political scene because, well, the bin is always laden and that is why one must empty it regularly.

One evening, I decided I could speak fancy English as well as everyone, and so I announced to my housemates that I would be buying a small SKILLET. That was met with blank expressions. I am buying a small skillet so that we won't have to fry eggs in that big pan, I announced again. Oh, a FRYING PAN, they chorused. (Celtic barbarians, I muttered under my breath.) But when they did fry poTAHtoes in that pan, they weren't FRIES at all but had somehow been transformed into CHIPS. Don't get me started with those poTAHtoes and toMAHtoes. I scoured the grocery shelves and there wasn't any toMAHto SAUCE, just diced toMAHtoes in toMAHto JUICE. But I don't want to drink it! I want to cook with it! I went on to the vegetable section already stressed out. No one knows of EGGPLANTS around here, just AUBERGINES. I could not positively identify the ZUCCHINIS because they were hiding under the alias OURGETTES. I've lostall hope of finding mustasa because I'm sure they're not called "moustache." I've seen menus featuring "spotted dick," but I'm too embarrassed to order it. I searched for BISCUITS, ignoring large packages of DIGESTIVES, which I thought were for septuagenarians who had to put all solid food through a blender. And because this is the north of England, I've been invited to TEA in the evening in which no tea was served it was actually DINNER. Then I was asked to DINNER, which turned out to be LUNCH. So now when they ask what I'm having for "tea," I say "rice." And when someone invites me to "dinner," I no longer plan to wear a shiny dress. I have also ceased to recoil upon hearing the various endearments with which total strangers address me: "luv" (fairly common), "flower," "angel," and get this "duck." Why the name of a domestic fowl is considered a fond nickname, I have no idea. If someone called me "bibe" (duck) back home, I would surely be livid and yell back, "Itik" (skinny Philippine fowl)! up:gucci handbags

I have had to LOAD credits onto a local SIM card given to me by a friend, but I found out right away that there is no pre-paid "loading" here, only TOP-UP service. You top-up your mobile phone, tuition, bank balance. All that topping up requires money, of course, and I cannot help making mental computations to convert pounds into pesos. (One pound is now about ahundred pesos.) So when I get a "concession" ticket (a discounted ticket for students) to watch a movie for "just" five pounds, I have actually spent P500 to see a film.

Oh, bollocks! As the Brits would exclaim, and to that I can certainly relate because it sounds like bulok (rotten) and in the plural, too. In other words, bulok na bulok (very rotten). Due to all the budgeting I have had to do, I have become better at MATHSyes, in the plural, as well. But for the first time in my life, my spelling skills have to be, er, topped up. It's labour, with a U. It's analyse and offence. All my written academic work is riddled with words underlined in red. I am completely DISORIENTED, but since this is England, I must be DISORIENTATED. Bloody strange, if you will excuse my English. Anyway, I don't understand why "bloody" or "bleeding" is considered a swear word in this country. In Tagalog, if a meeting or a confrontation is particularly tense, it will be described as madugo (bloody). How is that filthy? Probably for the same reason that here, "phlegmatic" is something of a flattering adjective. To be full of phlegm is to be quintessentially British: calm and unflappable. Me, I'm from a population of weak lungs where the horror of tuberculosis is still euphemized by the term "primary complex." I neither possess nor desire any phlegm whatsoever. To each language its own bodily fluid

You Are Internal - Realist - Empowered

You feel your life is controlled internally. If you want something, you make it happen. You don't wait around for things to go your way. You value your independence and don't like others to have control. up:gucci handbags You are a realist when it comes to luck. You don't attribute everything to luck, but you do know some things are random. You don't beat yourself up when bad things happen to you... But you do your best to try to make your own luck. You have a good deal of power, but you also know the pecking order. You realize that working the system does get you further. You know who to defer to and who to control. When it comes to the game of life, you play things flawlessly.

Stressful week!!! I think I’ve done a lot to exceed my limits as far as work is concerned. I exhausted all means to contain quality work within the normal 9-hour frame, but I’d still find myself leaving the office very late, around 80 percent of the time. Things make me unspeakably “neurotic.” I.Can’t.Bear.It…up:guccibags

Thanks Anj, I'm ROTFL na rin!!! Ahahaha!

Guys, if you need some good laughs, read this...
up:gucci handbags
And if you need one smart buddy to share those good laughs with, read this...

haha! i didnt know i could surprise a lot of people with a crew cut.
vain na kung vain! =)up:gucci bags hehehe!

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