i work with really interesting people in my new job. my direct superior used to work for a senator as part of his legislative staff, and prior to that she was a reporter on tv. when i first saw her she sure has the looks of one but she is sooo down-to-earth and smart, i could just shrink!
the boss in our unit is also one interesting character: she's a thespian and the director of one critically acclaimed indie film that was heavily accepted in the mainstream movie scene a few years back is her bestfriend (haha, isn't it so filipino? i still managed to ram myself into the six-degrees-of-separation genealogy tree, that hey, my friend [boss, actually], is the bestfriend of my this Direk!). so funny, we had a meeting today which she presided, and i felt like I was at the Gallaga Theatre.
this is really a gift of a job. busy and so many exciting assignments, and i think i'd only be able to blog on weekends or on slow days.
throw in a dirty couch and a clutter of scratch paper, pencil shavings and loose staples, and it would be a surreal Spectrum life all over again, only better!
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
keeping house and doing the grocery
Living alone has introduced me to some major responsibilities I used to just overlook and not meddle with: keeping house and doing the grocery. From Cebu to Manila, I have had a chockfull of insights, a rather thick collection of realizations to sweep into my undomesticated self.
You see, in terms of practical skills in the kitchen, or even basic knowledge on what needs to be stocked in the medicine cabinet, I am as empty as my grocery cart.
I now live without a refrigetrator and i realize that this is not just a vain appliance, an updated version of the Post-Spanish status symbol that is the dripping nievera, that makes water and everything cold. God, how expensive it can get to not have a fridge! its absence force-feeds me to Jollibee, McDonalds, Chowking, canned food and fake food that guarantee me real fat. its absence has made me forget how vegetables taste like, and makes me buy fruit and milk in quantities good only for a day. Imagine how much money i waste because of my refrigerator-less existence.
the grocery is another playground so confusing for the non-housewife.
just like free brainstorming, it's always fun to come up with a grocery list. i always start with the long, delicious list of a Stepford wife, but as the ghosts of rent, fare, utilities, and taxes (ooh taxes!) come haunting, the list becomes a sad, short stanza, even a couplet, on a post-it.
now which should go into the grocery cart?
as i didn't have a can opener yet (i benchmarked on the one we have had back home for as long as i can remember-- a knobless lever made at the sugar mill), i looked for easy-open cans. i was happy to see sausages in EOCs, and they come in exciting flavors, too. for a few weeks, that's what i stocked my psuedo pantry with, but for a time, no matter how they came in dollops of honey mustard or chicken stock, they tasted like pity. i started to curse every tinned food that relied on the teet of the dashing can opener that when at a distance i saw a row of gold EOCs on the grocery floor, a new brand i hadn't discoveredyet, and finally a new alternative to my sausages, i was ready to kneel in thanksgiving until i realized it was Alpo.
so i delayed the purchase of a can opener no further. i grabbed the first that i found not anymore considering my standards of an ideal can opener.
then i was welcomed to the aisle of canned everything. tuna, meat loaf, corned beef, sardines, even squid, each of them coming in an army of brands. Which do i choose? the safest of course would be those brands which my Mom buys. hmm. moms are such strong influencers and opinion leaders that no matter how defiant kids grow up to be, when they start living away from home and drive grocery carts on their own, all choices would be those brands their moms crammed the cupboards with.
but what brands does my Mom buy? the only thing i remember is that for meat loaf, she buys Victorias. :S
Dizzied by these tin soldiers on an overwhelming stand of shelves and not at all excited with opening cans with my new can opener, i dropped the simple machine, grabbed a pound of cheese, a loaf of wheat bread and went home.
You see, in terms of practical skills in the kitchen, or even basic knowledge on what needs to be stocked in the medicine cabinet, I am as empty as my grocery cart.
I now live without a refrigetrator and i realize that this is not just a vain appliance, an updated version of the Post-Spanish status symbol that is the dripping nievera, that makes water and everything cold. God, how expensive it can get to not have a fridge! its absence force-feeds me to Jollibee, McDonalds, Chowking, canned food and fake food that guarantee me real fat. its absence has made me forget how vegetables taste like, and makes me buy fruit and milk in quantities good only for a day. Imagine how much money i waste because of my refrigerator-less existence.
the grocery is another playground so confusing for the non-housewife.
just like free brainstorming, it's always fun to come up with a grocery list. i always start with the long, delicious list of a Stepford wife, but as the ghosts of rent, fare, utilities, and taxes (ooh taxes!) come haunting, the list becomes a sad, short stanza, even a couplet, on a post-it.
now which should go into the grocery cart?
as i didn't have a can opener yet (i benchmarked on the one we have had back home for as long as i can remember-- a knobless lever made at the sugar mill), i looked for easy-open cans. i was happy to see sausages in EOCs, and they come in exciting flavors, too. for a few weeks, that's what i stocked my psuedo pantry with, but for a time, no matter how they came in dollops of honey mustard or chicken stock, they tasted like pity. i started to curse every tinned food that relied on the teet of the dashing can opener that when at a distance i saw a row of gold EOCs on the grocery floor, a new brand i hadn't discoveredyet, and finally a new alternative to my sausages, i was ready to kneel in thanksgiving until i realized it was Alpo.
so i delayed the purchase of a can opener no further. i grabbed the first that i found not anymore considering my standards of an ideal can opener.
then i was welcomed to the aisle of canned everything. tuna, meat loaf, corned beef, sardines, even squid, each of them coming in an army of brands. Which do i choose? the safest of course would be those brands which my Mom buys. hmm. moms are such strong influencers and opinion leaders that no matter how defiant kids grow up to be, when they start living away from home and drive grocery carts on their own, all choices would be those brands their moms crammed the cupboards with.
but what brands does my Mom buy? the only thing i remember is that for meat loaf, she buys Victorias. :S
Dizzied by these tin soldiers on an overwhelming stand of shelves and not at all excited with opening cans with my new can opener, i dropped the simple machine, grabbed a pound of cheese, a loaf of wheat bread and went home.
very raw thoughts on quitting my job
How would you know if it's time to quit your job?
I quit mine two weeks ago because there were days when I felt guilty snatching work hours to go to Makati for job interviews. it may have been a lame reason, so impractical even, to resign when I had seen no light of a new job accepting me yet. But rather than shortchanging the company, i went penniless but fair.
For a time I had projected an image if affluence like how the company expects of its employees. i had saved much in fact, as galant dinner discussions with clients were all on the company. for this generosity we lovingly personify the company as "Papa G." It was never easy to let go of a piece of the wealth that Papa G *imposed on our lifestyles. who wouldn't want to be rich?
but i wasn't happy. i just din't have any significant fiber in me that would weave nicely and effectively into the world and culture of sales. for five months of being a "field worker" in legal parlance, i was so alone that to cope up with this loneliness, i detached cmpletely from myself and talked their talk. but ever so stubborn, my usual self would slip out and i would be misunderstood and unappreciated. so most of the time i resorted to shushing myself so as to be safe; i ended up being a loner, silently fornicating about my aspirations that were far from what sales offered me.
before the awful fornication continued, i decided to quit, they say, the training i went through to get in this multinational was a month and a half of going through the eye of a needle and it's crazy to let go of what you worked hard for, just like that. well i enjoyed training, but i found out didn't like the job; before i becme a liability to the company due to a lack of passion and drive for work, i left.
however my leaving was one thats thankful to GSK and my amazing boss for an experience full of insight, impressed with the company's highly ethical work culture and (blush, blush) very good looking colleagues.
after my last GSK day, i've been throwing all my cares to the wind, living by faith. that week, i had been going through interviews with a corporate NGO, which was the first i ever applied to after coming back from a project abroad in June last year.
the NGO had already sent me to medical and psychological exams, but i wasn't sure if I would be hired. I was only 75% sure, but the 25% could still have been a significant force of rejection. but hey, my faith in God was, and is, 100%.
i still don't know if my decision of leaving GSK was the right path to follow; not until after three years. but i'm just all praises to a miracle-working Force because after two weeks of calm recollection, rest and reading, I'll be working again. On Monday, I will start doing communications work for this corporate-led NGO...work i've always known, work that i love. :)
I quit mine two weeks ago because there were days when I felt guilty snatching work hours to go to Makati for job interviews. it may have been a lame reason, so impractical even, to resign when I had seen no light of a new job accepting me yet. But rather than shortchanging the company, i went penniless but fair.
For a time I had projected an image if affluence like how the company expects of its employees. i had saved much in fact, as galant dinner discussions with clients were all on the company. for this generosity we lovingly personify the company as "Papa G." It was never easy to let go of a piece of the wealth that Papa G *imposed on our lifestyles. who wouldn't want to be rich?
but i wasn't happy. i just din't have any significant fiber in me that would weave nicely and effectively into the world and culture of sales. for five months of being a "field worker" in legal parlance, i was so alone that to cope up with this loneliness, i detached cmpletely from myself and talked their talk. but ever so stubborn, my usual self would slip out and i would be misunderstood and unappreciated. so most of the time i resorted to shushing myself so as to be safe; i ended up being a loner, silently fornicating about my aspirations that were far from what sales offered me.
before the awful fornication continued, i decided to quit, they say, the training i went through to get in this multinational was a month and a half of going through the eye of a needle and it's crazy to let go of what you worked hard for, just like that. well i enjoyed training, but i found out didn't like the job; before i becme a liability to the company due to a lack of passion and drive for work, i left.
however my leaving was one thats thankful to GSK and my amazing boss for an experience full of insight, impressed with the company's highly ethical work culture and (blush, blush) very good looking colleagues.
after my last GSK day, i've been throwing all my cares to the wind, living by faith. that week, i had been going through interviews with a corporate NGO, which was the first i ever applied to after coming back from a project abroad in June last year.
the NGO had already sent me to medical and psychological exams, but i wasn't sure if I would be hired. I was only 75% sure, but the 25% could still have been a significant force of rejection. but hey, my faith in God was, and is, 100%.
i still don't know if my decision of leaving GSK was the right path to follow; not until after three years. but i'm just all praises to a miracle-working Force because after two weeks of calm recollection, rest and reading, I'll be working again. On Monday, I will start doing communications work for this corporate-led NGO...work i've always known, work that i love. :)
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Hi Miss Hazel,
How are you?
Guess what, I'm reading Jude the Obscure again. I recently and finally got a copy of it and Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
I'm just a bit past the pig slaughtering part but God, i realized how stupid I was in High school when you lent the book to me. haha i hadn't enjoyed it the way i do now. Thomas Hardy was way ahead of his time, and I have yet to find a writer at present who can equal him in terms of wit, imagery, imagination, etc. Can you? I had been reading another book before this, but I dropped it unfinished; Jude the Obscure is a scenestealer.haha. If you're reading something interesting now, please please share with me.
I don't know if this is the right reaction, but I find it so funny how Thomas Hardy describes Jude's naivite, etc. I kept chuckling during the slaughter scene, "Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have this to do! A creature I have fed with my own hands." well i laugh only to realize later that i am guilty because my mind has not been spared from also subscribing to the machismo that's demanded of men, despite my abhorring it outwardly.
On Arabella and a girl friend meeting years after the wedding:
As usual, they laughed before talking; the world seemed funny to them without saying it.
--so funny and true and timeless; Hmm... Arabella has a multitude of great great granddaughters, many of whom are keeping skin whitener sales shooting up.
Among others, i found this particularly striking, recalling the time Arabella threw the pig's penis at Jude while he was engrossed with his Christminster dream:
It had been no vestal who chose that missile for opening an attack on him. He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short fleeting while, as by the light of a falling lamp, one might momentarily see an inscription in a wall before being enshrouded in darkness. And then this passive discriminate power was withdrawn, Jude was lost to all conditions...of a fresh and wild pleasure...
Gosh, Hardy is one of those who makes me feel so unworthy of writing with a byline! I wouldn't have thought of such a metaphor for lust disabling ones restraint and intelligence.
All this time, I haven't seen Bare yet, and I'm happy i haven't. I admit, i read and reread many pages, this Hardy loves to play riddles with his readers huh. it's like a proverbial tug-of-war between hardy and the reader, like...ops ops ops, sigurado ka nga na intiendihan mo to? balik, balik, balik! hahaha! I'm not even halfway through, but I adoooore Thomas Hardy!
Hay ambot, damu pa gid tani. I miss you, I miss reading you! Musta na? Abe, chikahi ko! hahaha
Thanks, Miss Hazel, for introducing Thomas Hardy to me. I'm glad I'm reading it the second time. mwah!
Kimee
How are you?
Guess what, I'm reading Jude the Obscure again. I recently and finally got a copy of it and Tess of the D'Urbervilles.
I'm just a bit past the pig slaughtering part but God, i realized how stupid I was in High school when you lent the book to me. haha i hadn't enjoyed it the way i do now. Thomas Hardy was way ahead of his time, and I have yet to find a writer at present who can equal him in terms of wit, imagery, imagination, etc. Can you? I had been reading another book before this, but I dropped it unfinished; Jude the Obscure is a scenestealer.haha. If you're reading something interesting now, please please share with me.
I don't know if this is the right reaction, but I find it so funny how Thomas Hardy describes Jude's naivite, etc. I kept chuckling during the slaughter scene, "Upon my soul I would sooner have gone without the pig than have this to do! A creature I have fed with my own hands." well i laugh only to realize later that i am guilty because my mind has not been spared from also subscribing to the machismo that's demanded of men, despite my abhorring it outwardly.
On Arabella and a girl friend meeting years after the wedding:
As usual, they laughed before talking; the world seemed funny to them without saying it.
--so funny and true and timeless; Hmm... Arabella has a multitude of great great granddaughters, many of whom are keeping skin whitener sales shooting up.
Among others, i found this particularly striking, recalling the time Arabella threw the pig's penis at Jude while he was engrossed with his Christminster dream:
It had been no vestal who chose that missile for opening an attack on him. He saw this with his intellectual eye, just for a short fleeting while, as by the light of a falling lamp, one might momentarily see an inscription in a wall before being enshrouded in darkness. And then this passive discriminate power was withdrawn, Jude was lost to all conditions...of a fresh and wild pleasure...
Gosh, Hardy is one of those who makes me feel so unworthy of writing with a byline! I wouldn't have thought of such a metaphor for lust disabling ones restraint and intelligence.
All this time, I haven't seen Bare yet, and I'm happy i haven't. I admit, i read and reread many pages, this Hardy loves to play riddles with his readers huh. it's like a proverbial tug-of-war between hardy and the reader, like...ops ops ops, sigurado ka nga na intiendihan mo to? balik, balik, balik! hahaha! I'm not even halfway through, but I adoooore Thomas Hardy!
Hay ambot, damu pa gid tani. I miss you, I miss reading you! Musta na? Abe, chikahi ko! hahaha
Thanks, Miss Hazel, for introducing Thomas Hardy to me. I'm glad I'm reading it the second time. mwah!
Kimee
Monday, March 17, 2008
blue monday on leave
written on february 4, 2008
I'm absent from work today. I woke up late for jogging, it was already too hot outside at 8 am. Last night I was already feeling feverish, but i went on my weekend/on-call job anyway. I texted my mom that I wasn't working today and she approved of it. Well, since she's my boss, it was a liberating act of clemency! :) i just hope my boss in the company doesn't come across this blog.
i'm not only sick physically but i'm sick to my soul. i drag myself to work everyday because I can clearly see that the opportunities it promises me are far from what i want to happen in my life. the career path it offers is indeed varied but in the end it's still all about sales. and all that my colleagues talk about are how they got their cars pimped.
I got excited filing a leave-without-pay. It's quite a treat getting sick, I have this day all to myself. I just wish I were home. :(
I'm absent from work today. I woke up late for jogging, it was already too hot outside at 8 am. Last night I was already feeling feverish, but i went on my weekend/on-call job anyway. I texted my mom that I wasn't working today and she approved of it. Well, since she's my boss, it was a liberating act of clemency! :) i just hope my boss in the company doesn't come across this blog.
i'm not only sick physically but i'm sick to my soul. i drag myself to work everyday because I can clearly see that the opportunities it promises me are far from what i want to happen in my life. the career path it offers is indeed varied but in the end it's still all about sales. and all that my colleagues talk about are how they got their cars pimped.
I got excited filing a leave-without-pay. It's quite a treat getting sick, I have this day all to myself. I just wish I were home. :(
one night stand
written on february 2, 2008.
i came home with a big bunch of flowers last night. the guards in my dormitory must have thought it was an early valentines bouquet from a filthy rich suitor; or that i already heated up my valentines a tad too early what with coming home at past one a.m. :o
the flowers were from a wedding reception in tagaytay which we coordinated last night. this is the on-call job that i recently got myself to fill up my weekends, when homesickness breaks my heart badly. eight inches in diameter, these flowers were used as table centerpieces quite big for one to carry. but i brought home one anyway to give my room a semblance of home. the arrangement was elaborate, as elaborate as the wedding, with crystals pierced here and there and chinese tassles dangling from its base. beautiful. hah, i slightly opened my door for fifteen minutes today (which i rarely do) so others may notice. oooh naughty haughty kimee.
well, the rose bulbs, cabbage roses and stargazers indeed played their part sucking off all the gloom in my room that I'm afraid they might die come six tonight. :(
i came home with a big bunch of flowers last night. the guards in my dormitory must have thought it was an early valentines bouquet from a filthy rich suitor; or that i already heated up my valentines a tad too early what with coming home at past one a.m. :o
the flowers were from a wedding reception in tagaytay which we coordinated last night. this is the on-call job that i recently got myself to fill up my weekends, when homesickness breaks my heart badly. eight inches in diameter, these flowers were used as table centerpieces quite big for one to carry. but i brought home one anyway to give my room a semblance of home. the arrangement was elaborate, as elaborate as the wedding, with crystals pierced here and there and chinese tassles dangling from its base. beautiful. hah, i slightly opened my door for fifteen minutes today (which i rarely do) so others may notice. oooh naughty haughty kimee.
well, the rose bulbs, cabbage roses and stargazers indeed played their part sucking off all the gloom in my room that I'm afraid they might die come six tonight. :(
No roomies, living alone
written on january 21, 2008
This is exactly the room I had in mind when I wrote one of my few poems, Missing Cheese, that when I moved in two weeks ago, I was sniffing in search of even just a faint whiff of Missing Cheese cheese.
There isn't any trace of the creamy, earthy stench of camembert or roquefort. The janitress who ushered me has obviously kept the room in tenantable conditions. Well, at least, she has managed to sweep off whatever debris she left after filing her fingernails while haphazardly doing the occasional cleaning.
I am not after cheese in the air. But my dorm room, the size of two queen-sizd beds put together, is a capsule of solitary confinement, it would help if another one moves in! It wouldn't matter if the hamper plays gracious host to yet another pair of smelly socks each night.
But then again these are just stupid melodramatic episodes of a fresh grad acting like a brat, wishing for things that cannot be as of the moment.And episodes as they are, they come only in flashes, when there's nothing else to think about.
My room is a pretty decent space the width of a corridor and a modest size just enough for a bed, a closet, a built-in bedside table and a working desk. It's in the third floor of a yellow building by a busy main street where cars, jeepneys, buses and pedicabls plying all routes posible pass through.
Up in my room it may be a tolerable sanctuary for four thousand pesos a month shutting out urban noise abd decay, albeit not completely.
the revving and zooms of vehicles are still audible in a murmur, reminding me that tomorrow and the days to come, I would be loading up on the grease of Jollibee and the pseudo CHinese fare of Chow King, both a spitting distance from our building.
This is exactly the room I had in mind when I wrote one of my few poems, Missing Cheese, that when I moved in two weeks ago, I was sniffing in search of even just a faint whiff of Missing Cheese cheese.
There isn't any trace of the creamy, earthy stench of camembert or roquefort. The janitress who ushered me has obviously kept the room in tenantable conditions. Well, at least, she has managed to sweep off whatever debris she left after filing her fingernails while haphazardly doing the occasional cleaning.
I am not after cheese in the air. But my dorm room, the size of two queen-sizd beds put together, is a capsule of solitary confinement, it would help if another one moves in! It wouldn't matter if the hamper plays gracious host to yet another pair of smelly socks each night.
But then again these are just stupid melodramatic episodes of a fresh grad acting like a brat, wishing for things that cannot be as of the moment.And episodes as they are, they come only in flashes, when there's nothing else to think about.
My room is a pretty decent space the width of a corridor and a modest size just enough for a bed, a closet, a built-in bedside table and a working desk. It's in the third floor of a yellow building by a busy main street where cars, jeepneys, buses and pedicabls plying all routes posible pass through.
Up in my room it may be a tolerable sanctuary for four thousand pesos a month shutting out urban noise abd decay, albeit not completely.
the revving and zooms of vehicles are still audible in a murmur, reminding me that tomorrow and the days to come, I would be loading up on the grease of Jollibee and the pseudo CHinese fare of Chow King, both a spitting distance from our building.
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