Last night was craxy. Last night, I had a meeting at a friend's condo in Makati as we were planning something big. Since I didn't bring a car, I commuted to my friend's place. Never having been there before, I tried to guess out a route. I didn't want to take a taxi since traffic was bad, so I took a jeep instead and walked when I was near. After taking a small side street, I had to ask the guard of a nearby building where this condo was. He told me to go left and actually pointed to a tall building in that direction. I turned left and followed his direction, but I didn't see the building. After walking about 2 blocks, I decided to backtrack and turn right. Well, guess what? The building I was looking for happened to just be just a block away from that side street I took! So much for asking for directions.

But that's not yet the end of my story...

Before I got there, my sister told me that the elevator in that building broke down. In fact, they were inside the elevator when it broke down, so they were stuck in there for awhile. They had to get out and take the stairs the rest of the way. She advised me to take the stairs, instead.

When I finally found the building, I went to the lobby and front desk told me that the elevator was broken so I had to take the stairs. Then, he told me that my friend's unit was in the 21st floor! All the while, I thought it was just in the 2nd floor! So, I had to walk up 21 flights of stairs, with a really heavy bag (I had brought a laptop with me). After the 10th floor, I had to take some breaks in between to rest and by the time I got to the unit, I was breathless and really tired. We jokingly told each other that for those who were unfortunate enough to take the stairs up, we at least got the cardio workout we needed for the day--stepping. In my case, it was a combination of cardio and weights. ;-)

Later, they were able to get the elevator working again by the time the meeting ended, so we took that on our way out.

 

Here's yet another blog after another long hiatus. The sem's almost over and I'm as busy as ever. Anyway, I thought I'd type a short blog before I get back to work.

Something funny happened to my celllular phone today. Last night, I sent an SMS (texted) a friend to ask for her address, since I was planning to have something sent to her house. I didn't receive her reply that evening so I decided to text her again this morning. By lunchtime, she still hasn't replied, so I thought something might be wrong with my phone. I turned it off and on again and that's when all the messages came in! My phone wouldn't stop beeping for several minutes and I had to delete more to just to let the rest come in. Odd, since the same thing happened to my sister's phone yesterday.

 

Another interesting column on the use of IM abbreviations.

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/features/columns/?article=IMshorthandmain

 

Unbelievable! Read this: http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/CollegeandFamily/P125744.asp?GT1=6939

 

I finally gained access to my Spoke account, after a few days of not being able to log in. The layout's nice, though it needs some getting used to. I lost the list of my blog subscriptions, but it wouldn't be too hard to look for these people once again. I'm excited to test out the new features, but I have yet to find time to do this.

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Anyway, something I've been wanting to blog about since yesterday was an unfortunate experience I had with meetings. Yesterday, I was to have a lunch meeting in Makati with some people. At first, I wasn't really going to attend because of my schedule but because Monday was declared a holiday for government offices and public and private schools, I confirmed my attendance to the meeting the night before. I got the place and time of the meeting from that person after confirming my attendance.

When I got to the meeting place on Monday, no one was there yet. I assumed that people were just late, so I texted one of those who I knew were attending this meeting. Much to my chagrin, I just found out that the meeting was cancelled. They just forgot to inform me. It was rather annoying since that was my only purpose going to Makati. So as to not let my whole trip go to waste, I ran a few errands and picked up a few things on my way home.

 

Only about 6 hours of sleep in two days...wonder how long I'll last? :-þ

Long time no blog...again. A funny thing happened to me this weekend. I went to see an optometrist to have my eyes checked. I usually wear contact lenses, but for the past how many months, I've been experiencing bad headaches at night whenever I wear glasses the whole day.

At first, I had thought that I needed a higher prescription. As it turns out, it was quite the opposite. My glasses grade actually went down! Quite a rare occurrence, according to the optometrist, but happy news indeed. :-)

Google on your desktop! This is cool since it allows you to search the content of your files much faster. Yes, it initially takes awhile to index your files initially, but after that, searching for and through your files is a breeze. :-)

http://desktop.google.com/

Here's an interesting article of a former FBI profiler on how the television series, CSI affects jury members in the US.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8802371/

I finally spent a part of my National Bookstore gift certificates...P1000 worth, that is. I had to since yesterday was more or less the only "free time" I thought I would have left before it would expire. I have a very busy week ahean and it expires on Aug. 9. I decided to buy two books--one Calvin and Hobbes comic book for me and one interesting book for my mom and sister on how to restore/repair some antiques. My mom likes the book so much as it would be useful for our family business (which is custom framing) and I have yet to find time to enjoy the book I bought. :-)

I still have P500 worth of National Bookstore gift certificates, but these don't expire until next year, so that's another year for me to figure out what to buy next. :-)

One of my good friends from high school just recently emailed pictures of her stay in Autralia. She's currently taking her master's degree in Sydney and will be staying there for about 2 years.

Looking at her pictures, it made me want to go out and travel again. Anywhere would be fine, whether it be some place I haven't gone to here in the Philippines, a place I haven't been to in a long time, or even a nearby country would be okay, as long as I can afford it. :-P

My mom has been bugging me and my sister about those low fare trips to Malaysia and Singapore, but unfortunately, I don't think I'll be able to do that this year, as I'm forseeing a lot of work over the sem break and a long weekend doesn't seem like enough. Something I have to plan for next year! :-D

This weekend was full of highs and lows...
High - my 2nd cousin celebrated her debut (18th birthday) last Saturday at Conspiracy Bar in Quezon City. Cynthia Alexander with a small band performed there after her party.

Low - Also on Saturday, my sister and I received an SMS saying that one of our highschool batchmates passed away last Friday of causes yet unknown (she died on the same day she was brought to the hospital). Though we were not that close, it came as a shock to us as she wasn't the type who was sickly. She's the first in our batch to have left suddenly (though I already had a classmate in college who passed away a year ago). We went to her wake yesterday to pay our respects and to reminisce. Please pray for her soul.

I usually find my way around the city by means of public transport, if it's not too difficult. I guess I got used to it ever since I started commuting around high school. I think I did this even more often when I got to college and after college. Because of that, I learned to read maps and try to "guess" my way around what public transportation to take (if I'm really unfamiliar with the place, I try to ask someone I know who is). But, I would usually use road maps, the kinds that they would sell at bookstores. It was only today when I found a cool website for maps. Check this out:

http://www.mapcentral.ph/mapcenv6/index.cfm

This was much better than having to go through a lot of location maps of banks and stores just to pinpoint your route. Now, all you have to do is to mention the province, city and munipality and it brings up a detailed map. How cool is that? :-)

It's been awhile since I've blogged. Again. Busy, I guess. I think I barely had enough sleep the past two weeks because of work and school, which is why the non-working holiday was a big welcome. I think I spent half of my Saturday catching up on sleep. After that, I was back to my usual waking time, which is usually before 7am (sometimes 5am, sometimes 6am).

Again, so much has happened since the last time I've blogged. I finally finished the new Harry Potter book after almost 2 days of reading it. We won a contest (one of 5 winners) about 2 weeks ago that gave us a huge grant, and a lot of work to develop the prototype we proposed. It's a nice challenge that I welcome as an experience.

My sister and I also attended two parties last Friday. One was given by my high school's alumni association. Our high school will be celebrating its centennial next year so they organized some fancy dinner to formally launch it. Sadly, only a few from our batch came. It was interesting, though and it was nice to get to know those from the higher batches. After dinner, we went to another friend's party (actually more like a party for a magazine she works for). A sort-of mini-reunion since I saw friends I have not seen for years. It was fun, catching up to so many things in each others lives.

I also spent the long weekend reformatting and reinstalling software on what we call the "playdisk". A hard disk just dedicated to games (to separate it from what we call the "workdisk"). That way, it keeps the files for work relatively safe. Since the 20GB disk was beyond repair due to a lot of bad sectors, I had to temporarily use one of the old spare disks (8MB) with the intent to buy a new 20GB disk. To my surprise, the computer shops don't sell 20GBs anymore. Instead, they carry only 40GBs at the least, costing just a fraction of what I spent on disks that size almost about 2 years back. I have yet to buy the disk, but my brothers will be so happy. :-D

P.S. Oh, I also forgot to mention another thing that happened over the weekend...I finally got my braces out! :-)

This is somewhat related to Ma'am Didith's post with the same title.

Whenever I would commute to school in the morning, I would usually take the MRT-3 to Cubao, get off and walk a few blocks and enter a portion of a mall, aptly named Gateway Mall, that would lead me to the entrance of the LRT-2 station. This portion simply consists of stairs and escalators and anything leading to the mall would remain closed until 10 a.m., the time the mall opens.

On my way to the LRT-2 station this morning, I noticed some people waiting at the steps to the third floor entrance to the Gateway Mall. It was only after a few seconds that I noticed that they were in a line (not like the usual sitting scattered on the steps) and that they were near the entrance of Fully Booked (a high-end bookstore). It was 7:00 a.m. and about 25 people were already waiting in line for a Neil Gaiman book signing at 4:00 p.m.!

Since I was busy this weekend, I didn't even bother to go to the other venues. It also slipped my mind that he was going to Gateway Mall on a Monday (somehow, I got my dates mixed up and thought he would be at Gateway on Friday). Since I don't own any of his books (I'm not an avid fan, but I like reading his works), all I probably will get to do is to catch a glimpse of him on my way home (since I will still be passing that route home). :-)

Btw, check this out: http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/07/in-tent.asp