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A trip down memory lane

28th Jul 2010 by Chris

Sa totoo lang, wala kang dapat ipagmayabang dahil wala ka pa sa kalingkingan ng pagiging ina ng nanay ko sa amin!

That’s me, imagining the worst line I wanna deliver to the biggest b*tch of them all.. and I’m daydreaming.

I’ve been too tired, and it felt like I’m punishing myself at work. I needed to attend to some personal matters that really matter. Today, I thought of throwing stuff away. Yeah, I like to throw stuff away. Its a new habit that I have suddenly formed out of the Ondoy experience. The whole tragic experience brought me to an understanding how life can be short and that there are far too many things that should be experienced.

I lost a lot of things that were very important to me that time. I’m quite a sentimental person, but in the end, when Ondoy washed them away, I learned something important. VERY IMPORTANT. Its that life isn’t about the material things that you think matter to you, but the memories that you have for each event, each page of your life.

Some of the most painful things I had to throw away were books. Imagine how loudly I screamed when I saw my whole cart of books swimming inside the house! And it even included my precious yearbook (wherein, I dearly hate the editor for editing my eight-worded self description–as if she ever understood about individuality! Gaaahh, I’m so not talking about it here and now.. hmph!!!). It had a whole collection of best seller books I haven’t even touched in years, yet I kept promising myself I ever will complete reading them all. more…

Category: About me, Living Life, Stories to share Tags: 1981, airline tickets, Ali Mall, ATM, cat, earth witch, family, fun, happy, Living Life, love, memories, Peso, pet show, photos, Singapore, survival, teddy bear, Toy Story 3, uniform, zen Leave a Comment

Of old and new friends

17th Jun 2010 by Chris

For Independence day celebration, I got the chance to get in touch with an old friend and visit a new friend. :)

My old friend and I met at Starbucks Gateway to hang out and chat about his thesis topic. We talked about HR systems, about 37signals, project management, freelancing, etc. I felt really great about trying to explain to him the latest trends in programming and my IT career. He’s been completing his bachelor degree so, though he’s only a year younger than me, he’s still in school right now. He stopped for quite sometime then went back to schooling.

He’s more into Java right now, but since his thesis might probably end up in a web development, he’s more open to coding in PHP. I suggested he use Cake for a framework since its a bit closer to Rails style development. It’ll probably set a familiarity and edge for quick shifting to Rails. Ruby is not a hard language to learn, so I strongly believe he’ll be able to jump in right away.

After meeting up with him, I visited a fairly new friend and watched Karate Kid (which should really be “Kung Fu kid”) then had a quick dinner.

I’m really glad getting in touch with them after some time has passed. Glad they still treat me as a good friend, though I’ve been missing in action for quite a long time.

Category: Living Life, Stories to share Tags: 37signals, Cake PHP, dinner, freelancing, Gateway, IT, Java, movie, PHP, programming, project management, Rails, Ruby on Rails, Starbucks, thesis, web development Leave a Comment

Goodbye shell, hello world

10th Jun 2010 by Chris

It took the death of a loved one for me to understand that I have been slacking with the terms of living my life. All my life, my work, my efforts and energy were put mainly for the benefit of others. Now, I have the rest of my days to live my life.

I’m taking baby steps to reach my goals and I’m happy to announce I’m slowly getting there. I’ve increased my reading appetite and I’m now a more rounded being. I do my work well and I see friends more often. I’m into exercising by doing Yoga. I plan to do more by joining volunteer work (on demand) and joining fun runs.

I’ve opened myself to a whole new perspective where life is enjoyable and not tied to a single person. This is why living a single life is now more fun for me.

Last week, I came to see my highschool batchmates and it was a blast. I was really happy that I took the time to be with them even for a short while. I managed to share my happiness with them and get in touch with their lives again. Goodbye shell, hello world.

SMS Batch '97 get together

Category: Living Life, Stories to share Tags: Friends, fun, happy, high school, Living Life, reunion, Shakey's, Stella Maris College Leave a Comment

Yoga Bonding

7th Jun 2010 by Chris

My sister and I wanted to take part into another activity we’ll both be excited to do. We signed up for Yoga classes near us.

We were kind of late for the first session, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. After that first class, we went limping because of body pains The succeeding classes were a breeze, and now we both love Yoga.

Yoga in Sikatuna

Our teacher is Jivantiika. She’s a beautiful, soft spoken and very peaceful lady. She’s got a beautiful voice too and really does Yoga poses like its second nature for her. After the fourth session, she says I’m free to move into Intermediate class already because I’m already able to perform the poses better now. (while my sister still can’t reach the soles of her feet )

In case you’re interested, let’s be classmates! Visit http://yogainmanila.org/ and sign up. The place is very quiet with lots of trees outside. You could almost fall asleep doing cooling down poses. Overall, the place is not very rigid and the people are nice. You’ll see lots of familiar faces and new sets of classmates from time to time.

We’re really loving this. I’ll possibly sign up for more classes later on. And next time, we’ll sign up for swimming classes sometime in September. Hopefully, by then I’ll be slimmer and more confident. The medicines I’m taking are making me fat.

The post election thoughts on candidate selection

6th Jun 2010 by Chris

PS: This is a late post. I wrote this while waiting in line on the day of election.

I somehow regret that I woke up late to vote today. Anyway, before I totally waste this time waiting in line, i thought I’d write this down. What kept me up late last nyt was the fact that i wantd to be a responsible citizen. I looked up a list of national candidates. I reviewed each and everyone of them. Carefully went through each using my own criteria as follows:

1 if ever i heard them bash at another candidate, they’re out. That’s not how you market yourself. That’s already killing the competitor and it’s not healthy. more…

Category: Living Life, Stories to share Tags: day of election Leave a Comment

Never on Sunday, the Manaoag edition

25th Apr 2010 by Chris

“Oh kiss me quick, while we still have this feeling..”

“Love me tender, Love me sweet, Never let me go..”

Oh, how sweet to hear these music again. Even my creator rested on the Sabbath, the seventh day of creation. So here I am sitting on the 25th seat of a Victory Liner Bus, with a bag of raisins on my left and a a pen and notebook on my right. I know I’ve been sick, I know I have many things to do for work, which I’m always willing to do now before tomorrow (for “tomorrow” is a word I use for finding time to rest). But today is special, as the mission is special.

We visit the miraculous church of Manaoag every now and then, but today, we scheduled this date to hear Mass in Pangasinan, our home province, a bare 4-hour travel from Manila. Its a wonderful break for me, and a special request for and by the family. We’ve come to ask for healing. My youngest sister has just been diagnosed with a lung problem; my mom and I are also on treatment for some minor health troubles.

As I’m writing this, I’m feeling quite drained of my own energy. I feel my hands are growing colder and there is pain in my weakest spot. I have to stop from time to time to meditate and re-energize, for without it, I wouldn’t be able to further with my writing. I won’t let this stop me though from saying how good this day is and how happy I’ve felt inside just visiting the church once again. more…

Love to purchase online, please

10th Apr 2010 by Chris

I have long been a fan of shopping online. Since I had my very first credit card (which, up to date, has never increased its credit limit–this came from the bank I hate the most. LOL), I have learned to use Paypal and much so.. buy things online! I’ve made purchases from clothes, to books, to accessories, and now to cool gadgets! Weeeee!

The most challenging part so far, is actually including the shipping cost and some tax due upon receipt of the purchase. Its very hard at first since I’m quite used to buying things personally, like shopping from the malls. Sometimes though, I would have to resort to shopping online when I cannot find the items myself. I’ve encountered so many experiences in buying online ranging from extreme happiness/satisfaction to extreme sadness/disatisfaction. Some items look better in photos, while some are way better in physical form.

Most of the time, I resort to keeping a wish list for these online available items because I would always have to consider the shipping expense. Its when I can no longer sleep peacefully that I would have to really really drive myself to make the purchase no matter what! (which I kinda did recently). I’ve been eyeing a couple of things though from my favorite store–ThinkGeek. They aren’t my favorite from the point of view of a frequently satisfied buyer.. but from the perspective of a prospective buyer.

They have lots of cool stuff including LED watches, with which I would love to get my hands on! I really like the binary clock LED watch on top of the others. The other items are really nice to have though. Nifty, cool and useful. I also found some LED watch here.

If one day I’d find myself willing to go the extra effort to make a purchase of these not-so-essentials-but-nonetheless-cool-stuff, you’d be sure to hear about them! For the meantime, I’ll just eyeing of them.

Category: Stories to share Tags: binary clock, cool, gadgets, led watch, online purchase, paypal, shipping, thinkgeek, wishlist Leave a Comment

My first cabby receipt

15th Mar 2010 by Chris

Today seems a normal day. I have good vibes for today. :) At first I found it challenging (just a bit) to find a cab. I hailed one and it had the latest cabby meter. Traffic wasn’t too slow this morning, and so it was just a breeze. I’d read a few pages from the book I was carrying every once in awhile–when his driving wasn’t overly shaky. I got off infront of the building and was surprised when he printed a receipt. I thought at first that I could’ve sworn I wore a brief smile on my face when I saw the receipt at first.

From when I was young, I had some interest in receipts. I was still an amateur back then of course, but I knew that the format of the receipt could also say a few things about the developer behind the technology. I don’t believe that developers who create beautiful front-ends deserve lesser credits for a good backend code development and vice versa. The best ones are those who don’t tie their designs onto their codes. But anyway.. coderkitty isn’t in the house right now.. lawl.. more…

Category: Cool Finds, Stories to share Tags: code, coderkitty, development, receipt, Taxicab Leave a Comment

The Ugly things

13th Mar 2010 by Chris

These make me sick. Just like any other human being on this earth, we all go through different sets of emotions at any given time. From the highest to the lowest, deepest pit of emotion. But all of these things make us human nonetheless and I do not hate them. Still, with all of these said, we must deal with them too.

A week ago, I faced a similar rage I had to deal with. It seems to me, somebody (or something) is pressing all the possible button-combination they can try to try and tick me off. Yup, it blew my head away. But I got back easily.

The uncontrollable factor

I used to dream that I would become a scientist, way back when I was still very young. Lo, and behold, I would say I had become one! I was always the person with the logical brain.. trying to explain things the way mother nature has it. Even life’s circumstances was not unexplainable at some point. Nothing can deter me from trying to work my way into what fits as “explainable” and “logical”. There is always a reason for everything.. and when there is none, there is always God (to blame–LOL).

Friday night, I sent a message to a friend. I got a reply that annoyed me. Not only did it annoy me at that instant, but “it” continued to annoy me every three (3) minutes since I received it until possibly an hour and a half when I thought turning off my phone would be a solution.

Now, what has a scientist got to do with it? more…

Category: Living Life, Random thoughts, Stories to share Tags: anger, bad emotions, delivery, dream, Living Life, McDonalds, mobile, negativity, pressure, rage, SMART, SMS, stress, text message, ugly things Leave a Comment

The lessons we can’t deny

9th Feb 2010 by Chris

I’ve been through many ups and downs. But I can say I’ve never been to so much pain and crying in my life as I have experienced in the last six months of my life. I don’t ever want to go back and reminisce any of them anymore. With all these things, its still undeniable that things happen for a reason. If there is just one thing I could ever believe in, there are things in life that we do not choose for ourselves, but they do happen nonetheless, and somehow, even if you run away from them, they have a way of finding themselves back to you until you take it. more…