This afternoon, I spent an hour of my break with 2 officers of the CompE freshmen batch. Their president does a "little" fortune telling, so I had my fortune read... just for fun. After the card reading session, I regretted having my fortune read. She said many things that were true, about me, about my life both past and present. What scared me most were the readings for my future. So many things were said about my future which never crossed my mind. But after giving some thought to them, I realized they are rather possible... yikes! I don't wanna mention them here, 'coz the mere thought of noting them down in my blog scares me enough.

Anyway, to Maia and Van, please address your resumes to Mary Anne Y. Madrangca, Human Resource Assistant - Recruitment, Bigfoot Global Solutions Inc. I'll update both of you tomorrow after our short talk with Ma'am Ferolin. For now, just keep posted, and please... BUY TICKETS na, so that more "fans" will follow.

Rest day today, but still I had to wake up early to watch the booth for the ticket selling of our acquaintance party. By 10:30, I went to the dean's office to talk to Ma'am Ferolin regarding my OJT. She just asked me to go to Bigfoot and see Mr. Jimmy Cenabre or Ms. Mary Anne Madranca. Mom then picked me up from school and I had to drive around town for errands. Took lunch at City Sports Club then worked out afterwards, since I've missed one whole week's worth of exercise due to the hectic schedule of last week's Tabo Sa TC. I lost 1.5 pounds in one week due to stress, hehehe... thought my weight lifts will be reduced due to my one week negligence, but I found out I was able to carry 5 pounds more... strange. It's supposed to be the other way around. I am not human.

After gym, I drove off to Bigfoot to see the people I mentioned earlier. Their doors wowed me. From the parking lot, you can't enter any door in the building unless you wear their company ID, 'coz the doors open after you align the ID with an infrared receptor. Cool! (if they accept me, I could change that to retina scanners... hehehe... as if I know anything about that... hehe) The guard on duty handed me a visitors ID containing an IR pass, then I went in the HR department to see the people concerned. Tough luck, they were all in a meeting, so I met with their assistant instead. They just asked me to sumbit my resume via email... hi tech huh... On the way out, I saw some familiar faces... like some girl I know only by name as Chloe Ong from one of the talks Jed and I had before.

So I went back to Ayala, met Leorraine in my aimless wanderings around the mall. We stopped by Dessert Factory and shared one Brownie Ala Mode and two glasses of tap water pwease... I'm so tihik! It was supposed to be just a short stop there, but we spent 2 hours talking about a common friend of ours (Joey Gaisano) and how much we admire him for his traits. You peeps should know the guy. He's very down-to-earth considering what a rich kid he is. There should be more like him walking around in this planet.

Enough of that... I left the place early 'coz it was getting dark and I needed a haircut badly (my "patilya" is starting to bug me) When I reached Annie's, a barber there told me it was my "suki" barber's day-off, so I just went back to our store. Leorraine, on the other hand, just stayed at Dessert Factory waiting for her mom to fetch her... God forgive me, I left the poor girl alone, I'm so ungentleman... I don't know what's become of me. Sometimes I look at the mirror and I don't want to see myself anymore.

Let us pray for a swift resolution to the coup crisis in Makati.

Last week was definitely one hectic week full of exams and council activities for the Tabo Sa TC fair in our campus. This week I'll take a breather from all the "busy-ness" and perhaps concentrate on my OJT application for Bigfoot. I was able to talk to the assistant dean of our college yesterday and she offered to help us get in the very selective screening of Bigfoot's HR department. Her reply will be this Tuesday, so I hope it's a favorable one. I guess this is all for now, since I really have nothing more to say. It's a good thing I'm taking ENGL21: Business Correspondence this semester, so writing resume's and composing application letters won't be that much of a problem.

No classes for me today, but I had to wake up as early as 6:15 to be in school by 6:45. I had to put up the tent for our concessionaire booth and transfer stocks from the CEC office to the selling area. By 9:30, our booth started its 2nd day of selling BBQ and other sugba-sugba. Hopefully today's sales turned out to be better than yesterday's.

I didn't watch the booth all day since I had to report to Ayala to do service for my mom. Went to Ayala with Maia and Plum to buy some supplies for the bulletin board contest. Maia made mention about OJT being offered at Bigfoot while we were at National. Hmmm... Bigfoot's actually where I plan to work after college (while taking masters, maybe), so I think I'm up to it. I'm free whole day on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I certainly could use some training in my field of work. I'll check with the department tomorrow regarding this. My mom just gave me a go signal after we talked about it over dinner. This could be something... interesting. Thanks for the information tip!

Late blog again 'coz of Council work... I'm watching my academics with uncertainty. Sometimes I just can't concentrate. Must implement a yoga treatment for this. Anyway, my day was a very memorable one. Saw once again the smile that launched a thousand ships... ships that sank my ship that is... bwahahaha. This time it was not a split glance type, it was GIVEN sincerely and I have to admit, smiles look nicer when they are given wholeheartedly... hehe. As to Karen's comment... laff all you want... hardy har har... hahaha! bleee... Getting to a relationship is not in my itinerary now. It's tiring and sometimes it's an investment that could go to waste for such the lamest of reasons. Better to work hard, get good grades, serve people and make everyone happy instead of just one. Enough of this, better hit the sack before the roosters crow... still got a 7:30 class to attend.

Today was SUPER kapoy! Never thought having permits signed left and right could drain me so much. 6 hour break all went to council work. I stapled together some 140 handouts, arranged for a quiz bee, drafted some last minute resolutions and had lots of contracts and forms signed for 2 organizations I'm personally handling.

But, it was all worth it, 'coz when it was time to take a breather from all that work, I got to spend some funny moments in text with my once Happy Thought. Hahaha! I had a fun-filled afternoon... It somehow felt like two summers ago when my smiles would reach from one corner of the world to the other corner. It does feel good to know that we've remained friends till now and she's still as funny as ever. Today's series of text was more like a continuation of 2 summer ago's texts. Still as funny as ever and the usual bloopers that come with it. Hehehe... see, nag gud night pa sa akin with a smily... hahaha! I feel so weird about this. I feel numb and can't feel it like before.

Hahay, wish ko lang pero sana this is the one for me someday. I'd really be the luckiest guy on this planet, but I believe God has His plans for me. As to that plan, I know not. If she's the one, then I'd really be happy and I'd make her that happy too, but if not I will respect God's will for me and for her and I'll love whoever is for me in much the same way, not diminished anyhow.

Forgive me peeps for this, kilig lang siguro. But this will be nothing by tomorrow I assure you, since I've learned to keep my emotions at check so they don't get overboard. Anything in excess isn't healthy. Had to learn it the hard way, but I learned the lesson, so it was all worth it.

Have to go and do MORE work.

Somebody help me here... I accidentally dropped by hard disk when I brought it to school yesterday. When I connected it back at home, my PC won't detect it anymore. I had it checked at Ng Khai and they said it's irreparable. 6GB of data all lost. There goes my whole MP3 collection plus my installers... huhuhu. All I have left now is my other 4GB HD for my OS and my files. If anyone out there knows where I could get an expert to fix my HD, please tag on my board. I'll appreciate it a lot. Thanks!

Somebody help me here... I accidentally dropped by hard disk when I brought it to school yesterday. When I connected it back at home, my PC won't detect it anymore. I had it checked at Ng Khai and they said it's irreparable. 6GB of data all lost. There goes my whole MP3 collection plus my installers... huhuhu. All I have left now is my other 4GB HD for my OS and my files. If anyone out there knows where I could get an expert to fix my HD, please tag on my board. I'll appreciate it a lot. Thanks!

--+--!!!Happy Birthday Deanne!!!--+--

It's been a long time since I posted birthday greetings here. Anyway, Karbelow is the poster I made for our acquaintance party...(low resolution so it won't take too much time to download to your browser) We have 600 tickets in print, if there will be unsold tickets by August 1, you peeps might want to join us, so pease tell me if you want to buy. Ticket price is 250, Village Courtyard, August 16, 2003 6-12midnight, dress to party!



I wanted to have our tickets perforated, but it would cost the council an extra 500 bucks... expensive, so I spent my afternoon looking for a perforating tool. At the end of my search from hardware shops (True Value) to school supplies (National Bookstore), I was able to find one... guess where?... at the linen section of Metro Ayala. They call it the "Tracing Wheel". It's actually a sewing tool and instead of using it for its real purpose, I used it to make those dotted cuts you see in raffle tickets. It actually cuts through thick paper and makes those tiny perforating dots! Amazing!... another handy tool discovered.

After spending just 16 pesos for the tool instead of the 500, I spent 3 hours straight at our cozy store perforating all SIX HUNDRED (600) tickets to separate the meal and drinks stubs. Boy was it tiring! My shoulders ached, my neck hurt a bit and my FINGERS! But doing it all was fun... know why? After every 100 tickets perforated, I'd say to myself, "Don't worry, dinner tonight's gonna be yummy!"... and in no time, I perforated the last ticket! Eureka!

True enough, when I got home, dinner table was... I dropped my stuff in my room and dashed for my spoon and fork. The food was G-R-E-A-T! Our cook served once again that same oriental salad, Mexican tacos were there, a very tasty porkloin with onion rings, creamy quail egg soup,... AND for the first time in this household, Rellenong Alimasag (Stuffed Crab) was served. Despite my allergy towards crustaceans, I couldn't resist the crabs tempting me "Eat Me!" hehehe.

Day Drain
I practically spent half of my day at the LTO office in downtown. I didn't realize that filing for a new driver's license could be such a hassle. Aside from enduring the very annoying fixers there who constantly bombarded me with "offers", I had to wait about 2 hours before I could secure the necessary papers. I underwent an eyesight test and a urine drug test... costing me a total of 300 bucks... rip off... The place was extremely hot, so I decided to wait at a Dunkin Donuts outlet nearby. The good news was the shop was airconditioned, the bad news was, they had no chairs... only tall tables, like cocktail tables. So I opted to stand and enjoy the cool air rather than sit but get drenched in sweat. I calculated the time well, and so by the time I returned to the LTO office, my number was called. I had to line up to pay another 298.20 bucks for the license, and by the time I was done, I was sweating again. Then I had to enter a small room to have my picture taken. Picture taking should be the 1st step, 'coz if it's the last, they'll be photographing tired, sweaty faces. So by 11:30, I got a amall sheet of paper as my temporary license. The plastic one will come 6 months from today.

The QUESTION
My mom fetched me afterwards. And while I reclined the seat to relax and enjoy the aircon breeze, my mom popped this question: "Pasar ka drug test?"... geesh... what does she take me for? hehehe...

Driving Days Here I Come
I'm back to being designated "D"... designated DRIVER... that is. I drove around for errands like before... I'm supposed to do council work for today, but I accomplished only so little. Bought some parchment paper for certificates... just that! Tickets were supposed to be printed today, but the darn diskette I brought with the file on it won't work when it was opened by the artist at Business Box. So I'll have to send it via email tonight... and a back-up copy tomorrow during my 1-hour lunch break... so there goes my lunch for tomorrow. Went to Flame It! to offer them selling rights in next week's Tabo SA TC Fair. I got there too late, so the manager left already. Tried to reach her mobile, but no reply. Office hours is office hours, after that... *cricket sound

We have a new cook in the house. This lunch, she made some sort of oriental salad with sesame seed, shredded cabbage and grilled chicken. It was so tasty, that none of it was left after lunch. I spent my whole afternoon designing an ad poster for our CompE Acquaintance Party. It took me a very long time to design it in Adobe, since I had to make it really attractive, so people would notice it. As with any design, functionality is important. I tried to combine a creative design with many high tech effects and lines and forge it with heavy text information. I still think I could do better than this design, but it would cost me a lot of ink to print. Simple but informative sums up my afternoon's work.

Our cook grilled us some steaks for dinner... yummm... tastes like David's minus the meat quality. With mint jelly and extra spices, it's rewarding enough for a whole afternoon's job. Asked her to experiment on some pasta... something like Il Sole's tagliatelli ala sicilliana. I'm now watching Dude Where's My Car? on TV... hilarious.

Have to go now to do some homework. Have left some academic matters behind due to extra-curricular work, so I should get back to it and maintain the balance.

I've been an extremely busy bee today... I haven't had a single decent meal yet. I even had to cut my evening class just to make way for council work. Today was the last day for registering for tomorrow's seminar. At closing time, 6:30PM, there are 140 participants for tomorrow's lecture. Priority 120 will be seated and the "last minute" registrants will just have to find a comfy nook to take down notes. Rey volunteered to handle the event, so that's one big load off my back... whew. The seminar starts at 12, but I'll still be in my 10-1 class then. Just wrote Rey a "guest speaker introduction" address for him to read tomorrow. Hope everything turns out well. Snacks aren't part of the deal as planned, but I'll just leave 1K with the officers to provide snacks. Just ended a call from Ma'am Daday, and she says OK lang. I guess a Funchum and a big piece of bread will do.

This afternoon, Johan and I first went to Grand Convention Center. When we went there to book the place, there's already been a booking made for a wedding reception. The quotation was not so impressive, but at least cheaper. We went out of Grand Con scratching our heads. Found ourselves walking on the road towards the flyover... we were about to cross the street to get a ride back to TC, when we thought about giving Village Courtyard a try. We walked all the vay to The Village passing into Waterfront.

When we got to the place, it felt like the place was all set waiting for us. The owner was there, his son who manages the Courtyard, and their events manager were all there... with lights, mixers, speakers, subwoofers and aplifiers all set up. We even got a look of how it will be on the night of Aug. 16 itself. Hmmm.... people will not be so interested in eating... they will be DANCING! Hehe... We sat down and discussed terms with them. After an hour's discussion, we came up to a deal. More expensive than Grand Con, but at least we'll be free from the hassles of signing contracts with Suburbia and bargain hunting for equipment rentals. In the end, Village Courtyard comes out cheaper still. The son of the owner, Don Tirol, is my brother's classmate in SHS-B. He knows me and Johan too, so medyo nakadiscount kami ng konti. Proud to be a HEARTER!

So, Village Courtyard it is. Finally, my tickler - "Things To Do List" has been cut down by almost 80%. I'll just have to worry about ticket sales, decorations and other stuffs to make the whole package sulit.

That's it for now. Got to log off to write a business letter to Village Courtyard to formalize everything. Have to redo my design for the tickets and have to design the huge AD posters for this event.

Today, I took over the ticket collection for this Saturday's seminar. 27 spots left exclusively for the juniors and the super-seniors... if not, we've got 13 seniors willing to fill in the 27, which leaves us... 14 more registrants before we hit the 120 mark... Hopefully we could hit the 120 target!

My classes today were fine... rather boring with the rainy weather... Was busy running from the office to the canteen. I was afraid to carry so many loose paper bills, so I decided to convert all 20's & 50's into 100's, then all 100's to 500's, then 500's to 1000's. 5,400 is currently under my possession... so I'm really safekeeping it... with my LIFE!

Still clueless as to what band we should hire for our party. I didn't realize hiring bands could be COSTLY.... 10K up... hmph... at these rates, I should start considering the entertainment career... hehe. Maybe the only entertainment job I could get myself into is wearing a silly mascot and being clobbered by squirming little kids... hahaha LOL!

Today was unusually fantastic. Mondays are supposed to be dreary days, but today just worked out like a perky Friday. My 1st class in the morning, Eng'g Economics had an exam. Exam was easier than our previous seatworks, so I was kinda more cautious just in case the teacher had tricks up her sleeve. Learned lots from my classes today... most of them are proofs of equations. It's nice to know how equations are derived rather than just blindly memorizing them. Finally I got something out of Sir Salva's lectures... whatta miracle!

Had a very full lunch with Jeff and some EE fellers. Got a call from Stanley about the seminar this Saturday. Completely forgot to brief the officers, so I had to rush to meet Stanley and Mitch so they can disseminate the instructions to their batch council officers. By the way, thanks Gary for following up the posters with Sir Bums... and thanks for posting them personally. Van thanks for the permits for the Tshirt Design Poster, hope you and Maia could assist Ipay in case she needs help with the seminar registration.

Sir Abaquita caused a tsunami in my brain with his lessons in Statistics... sorting, tallying, computing, graphing and all... Enough of that. I then joined the school paper's courtesy call with our dean. Hehe... we had fun there. The dean was so "jamming", so unexpected of someone in his position. He asked us to make an evaluation of some instructors and to forward our comments to him... hmmm... I have some teachers in mind. He also shared with us some of his plans... like computerized exams (thesis of Sir Madz)... hmm... this year will be different after all.

Cippy Lu then picked me up in school and we went to his house just nearby. What a nice Mercedes SL 500 he has. He asked me to help him with his Microeconomics... Finally saw how Economics is taught in the States... really thorough and very analytical... essays, proofs and graphs. Took my economics skills after my mom!

Cippy brought me back to TC after an hour. Went to the CEC office to design some certificates and killed time there playing Super Text Twist till my 6:30 class. We had an exam... a really long gruelling exam. Our teacher is really a naughty one. The problems were very easy, but very kuti and I've never seen an exam as tricky as what he gave. He kept on passing by my seat looking at my testpaper... and I felt so insecure. I felt like someone's peering out to find an error in my solution. He passed by once and murmured "Kaya mo yan kid!" I immediately reviewed my solution, since one machine problem solution was worth one whole yellow paper... and making a mistake at the first few steps would definitely be COSTLY! I hope I made no mistakes there.

When I passed my paper, the teacher gave me an evil grin... yikes! It could only mean two things. I don't want to think about it. Nway, I'm now home blogging this, and have to go now to phone some bands for our acquaintance party.

What a nice day! From the tutorials, I learned something... learned that I've forgotten how to factor polynomials... hehe... shame on me... my tutee had to teach me that before I could proceed teaching him the rest of the solution to the integral problems. With all the partial derivatives, iterate series, Fourier & Laplace transforms, I forgot the basics of my algebra... hehe. Anyway, I loved the tutorial session, especially when I started discussing about trigonometry. For once my brain had to function a notch higher than the usual to be accomodate analysis for application problems regarding triangles and angles... the light and shadow problems, course & bearing problems.

After the tutorials, I had to rush to my 10:00 class. I was 15 minutes late, but... the teacher was ABSENT... grr... so I went back to the tutorial sessions and taught whoever was there. Went to the CEC office to play Super Text Twist for two hours, then I went to the canteen to arrange some of the tables & chairs for our 1:30 meeting.

Clock struck 1:30 and still we weren't able to start. The consolation there was that instead of the usual 1-hour Filipino time, it's been lowered to 30 minutes. Definitely and improvement! Agenda for the meeting was just the acquaintance party. The batch council officers present were very supportive with their comments & suggestions both negative and positive. People were very open-minded and so things flowed very smoothly. In no time, we started planning for the event's programme... like live bands and other pakulo... We might contract Serendipity to play during our party this Aug. 16. If not, we can always call in Cattski, Johnny & The Walkers, Powerspoonz or Suburbia. The cake's baked already, just have to put some icing, a few carvings and voila! This P A R T Y's gonna be B E A U tiful.

I'm in extremely high spirits today, so I had a haircut to feel really fresh 'n clean. Had dinner with family at Cafe Wien, went home, blog this and after this I'll finally hit the sack before anything comes up to spoil this perfect day!

Wow! What a nice Blogger console...

Been a fat pig early this morning... took me a lot of effort to wake up... so I was left by the car... Had to walk to Foodland then take a jeep to school. My shoes needed a break-in anyway, so there it goes. On the way to Foodland, I passed by a house where a group of people we doing some videoke. They were singing Metoer Rain with all the Chinese intonations and all. As I passed by that house, I began to think... "Do they even know what they're mumbling about?"... hehe. We'll it's all for fun anyway. So I went on smiling to myself.

Reached Foodland, crossed the intersection and then boarded a small multicab. I forgot to bring some coins. Good thing the driver had change for my 50. I forgot... barya lang po sa umaga. Reached TC to find out heavy traffic...

Feature Article... FRESH
I got harangued outside the school for about 15 minutes 'coz there was a brawl inside one of the jeeps right infront of the USC gate. The scene caused such a heavy traffic since passersby stopped to see what's going on.

Two guys were fighting inside the jeep, so all the passengers rushed out, except for the 2 men and the wife (I presume) of one of them. The USC guards rushed over and pulled out one of the men. They asked the other man and that lady to disembark from the jeep, but the lady held the man back like she was holding for dear life.

I didn't want to go near, since we've heard of so many stories about onlookers getting killed by stray bullets missing targets. So I stood behind a chest-level wall, so I could seek cover should any unforseen eventualities occur.

I began to wonder why the lady held that man back. As I stayed longer in the scene, I realized that one of the men was waiting outside challenging the other man to a fistfight. The lady held back her "loved one" to avoid any bloodshed. She was all sweaty, shouting at the top of her lungs. For once there, I thought she was the antagonist, but later, I saw that she was the peacemaker.

Though the scene was violent, I saw the struggle of the lady, and her struggle reminds me of those unheard-of modern day heroes.

So on I went in the school campus to share this story fresh from the site.

Have to leave now so I could handle an Eng'g Math tutorial session till 10. I'm already 15 minutes late. I'll blog more tonight about my class at 10 and my meeting at 1:30.