Brighter Days

After almost 3 or 4  months of struggle for leaving the town, moving, adjusting and adapting to a totally different place, here I am, alive and back. Jen, whom did a lot of effective pep talk for me, would always remind me no matter how hard it gets for us that there's no other way but "straight up". Direcho lang. That's our direction everyday. I never thought I could make it through Day 1, then doubts went on until my first pay out, which is like one and a half month after. Because I was dead penniless when I decided to move out. So yes, whoever said that money can't buy happiness can die now, because that's not true. Apparently, happiness costs more bucks than you thought. To get me to Jen's place, to eat, to sleep in a decent room, Jamaican Pattie, and what have you. Other than that, the big city is exactly the place you see in TV. Traffic Jam. Blistering heat. Flood when it rains. Ugh. Longest lines I've ever been! That's the worst I can say. So I got a tip that you might want to keep handy. By any chance you'd use the ATM, never assume that the line will be shorter LATER, because it won't. It will just get longer so you have to fall in line as soon as you arrive. That's also true to filcab and the loos.

I work 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, in the most convenient schedule I could have. I wake up at 4 AM and take off to work at 5 and I'm at home before 4 PM. Neat eh? I'm just in training and I also get to spend Saturdays with Jen so I'm having the time of my life. I never felt so alive.

Read More

Letter No. 0519

My forever love,

We are about to start a new chapter in our adventures. To something bigger for both of us. I know it is not going to be that easy that is why we need to be strong. Stronger. I believe in your strong and now chubby guts, love. And you do not even have to worry if that fails, because you will have me after all. I know we can make it because we have each other no matter what. And aside from daily breakfast, these are the things we must always remember:

1 Talk with each other no less than we do for 4 years (we are doing an amazing job on this);

2 Think. It is overrated to say we must think first before acting but there;

3 Prove the world's great fortune teller wrong for saying we won't last;

4 Laugh on the dumbest desperate tries of our subconsciousness to tear us through bad dreams and everything of that sort.

You may revert if you want to add other things. Until then I will live on this everyday. I will wait for that right time for us even if that job stings for me every minute.

Mush Potato

Read More

That's My Big Cake There

Item no. 12 from my 50 Things To Do Before I am 60 list way back in 2009, CHECK. 

Thank you, Tier2Pedia! I will miss you big time, too.

Read More

Msiplecad

One year after graduation, seven months after passing the Not so Easy Board Examination, I still feel the same. I'm misplaced big time.

You can tell that I am. I haven't got any decent job in the hospital, or clinic, or community. I wonder if there's ever a "decent" job out there for us now, honestly. But no matter how my profession has been "challenged", I am supposed to live it by now.

I know it's such a waste of time and will to think of something you could've been when you could always make lemonade from the ones you've got. But I feel terrible to imagine how life could be brighter if I had been a TV host or documentarist or director, more often than I move bowels lately.

I'm going to tell why for once. I have this ability to mutate into someone super working with things I really like. I guess, it's a higher degree of compensation, too. People from my high school could attest to that. During senior year, we have three Mathematics subject (Alzebra, Calculi and Trinonomy). I would never hit above 85 in any of those but my English subjects' mark are, well, they're outstanding. Apparently, Mathematics outnumbered our English subjects (we just have 2, English 4 and Public Speaking), so I still didn't graduate valedictorian. Hahaha. I'm kidding. I need to battle off 14 brains to get there. There's just too little pride one could take being on the 15th spot in a class of 40 just because they can't find the motherfugging X everytime. I mean it's probable, if we had 12 English subjects and 1 Arts, right?

Going back to my lemonades, it's like a big version of Mathematics. I'm thinking that maybe I am not getting any post in a hospital just because I don't like to. Other reasons would be shadowed excuses.

I always wanted to make documentaries about things, people, events and probably french fries, too. That's why I wanted to get in either communication arts or film at the University of my Dreams. My parents thought it would be great, if I won't get killed in a rally. They always thought I'd become an activist when I go to college because of my temper and intolerance to mediocrity. And that is the story entitled, "Why I ended taking up nursing in the nearest state university". What's yours?

Read More

Ngayon Gets Ko Na

Hindi lang basta luxury o exaggerated ang team building sa call centers. Nagiging necessity sila sa gatong trabaho. Gaya ng pagyoyosi.

Pumapayat o tumataba ng sobra ang mga tao. Walang sapat na physical activity para sa normal na metabolism. Papagutom ka na lang kung ayaw mo ma-constipate.

Hindi mo na maidentify kung alin ang coping mechanism at alin ang attitude lang ng mga katrabaho mo. So para mapalampas mo na, iisipin mo na lang coping mechanism ang lahat.

Pag nasa floor, makahanap ka lang ng masasandalan, makakatulog ka na. Pero pag day off at andami mong oras para matulog, kulang na lang maghanap ka ng mabibilhan ng antok para makatulog.

Read More

Of Work and Satisfaction

Human are born self-satisfying creatures. But there will always come a time when we will find greater joy in making somebody else' life brighter one way or another. (Do I sound like I'm getting old?) It's just something I actually get from work. In a call center, where I am currently working, everyday is a DIFFERENT experience, but if I could write a story for every call that I had, it will always sum up to that realization.

I am the most impatient and stubborn person at my worst. It's amazing how I get through every long and annoying calls I get though. What really happens is that those people I talk to on the phone help me as I help them. They help me learn patience (though partly coerced) like I will never learn it from anything else.

Some days you will get the most verbally abusive person you will ever talked to in your entire life on the phone but they are the ones I believe who needed my help the most. Because if I won't help them, who else will? Though it's a bit lame, I ask myself that question everytime I feel like releasing the call. Then I stayed the course. They are the hardest work for me, I could cry when we got through successfully and when they strip off to kind and thankful lambs.

On the other side of the coin, there are these old people, where I get all kinds of consolation and inspiration. Don't you just think they are the most grateful people in the world? I don't know if it's just me but I could not think of anybody as appreciative and contented as this folks.

During our training, we were asked what might inspire us working in this kind of office. To think that I will have the power to make things better for some people. I could not get any better answer than that. This is not where I planned to be, but little things like a million dollar "Thank you(s)" is worth all the sleep and life lost - enough to make everyday a try again day. :)

Read More

We got Tumblr!

http://somethingswelearn.tumblr.com/

it's a compilation of every bit of what we learn everyday.
hoping that you'd learn something from them, too. yeash. please do follow us. ^^

Read More

Of New Beginnings and Unknown Endings

I've been working more than 9 hours and sleep for the rest of the hours of the day. I get up for a couple of minutes to talk to Jen. And that's the only real beak I get. I wonder what would my younger self would tell me now if ever she get herself out deep from within. Because I remember what exactly I told myself when I was in high school. I wouldn't work in a million years for any job that's in an office. To be sitting the whole day in the same office and do the same thing everyday, it could kill me. Well, guess what, I am here. Learning how things work in the millionth year.


I just signed a contract in a BPO. It just tarted from a speck of curiosity to get out from the strawberry's to another field. I could technically strike through it on my bucket list now, I already tasted the fruits from the other backyard. And I just passed the forking board exam, I could find greener pastures out there. But I cannot just yet.


I will be starting to take live calls tomorrow, after 2 months of almost every kind of training. Because the pay would never be, the only inspiration I have now is that when I sit there, I will be like a superhero of some kind. People who got problems will be calling me and I will be there to make things brighter for them. That's what I am proud about being where I am now. I know it's cheesy but I always have this delusions of making the world still a better place to live in someday. It's not that big to be felt by everyone, but isn't the magical world of Disney built by uh, Mickey Mouse? Ugh. Well, maybe this one's my shot.


I don't have long term plans as of now, which is really so not me. I don't know if that's good. It's just either I am old enough to recognize the existence of change or me going back to early adulthood when people just decides from density of their hormones. I don't know. I have a lot of reasons to get off the bus. But I have reasons for staying, too. Not as plenty as the reasons why I'd want to go, but perhaps greater. My contracts lasts for just a couple of months anyway, might as well make the most out of it. Next stop, I'll know when I get at the next station.


And maybe my younger self was that cat.
The one that curiosity kills every now and then.

Read More

M&M's TW #3

I want to be a real madman for a day. So I will have the privilege of saying my thoughts without filtering them. I can tell unbarred truths all the time. It's okay if I dont shower which is very favorable on cold and rainy days. I won't worry about people minding my manners. I won't understand norms and so I'm not compelled to act on it. I could tell our love story over and over again. I will have some degree of courage and freedom I don't have as a psychologically sound being. I could be just anybody - the great skeptic, the president, the sinner, the saint, the lover. Every moment is the first and last. Every day is a new day. It doesn't matter if the day went terrible, because at the end of it, like all the other might-have-been days, I will forget.

Read More

Of Self-worth and Body Weight

I wake up at 9 AM in an empty house because everybody else has their own place to go. Watch DVD of some TV series finishing one season all at once. Coffee break before lunch, at late afternoon, before bed and some other random times throughout the day when I think I need some. Wash exactly 10 pieces of my clothes from my laundry basket when in the mood. Eat late lunch. Walk in and out of my room few times a day hoping to remember something to be done. But it's the same dark, quiet and tight place. Everything sits perfectly on their places most of the time. Nap after lunch that would last for 3-4 hours. Renaming all the MP3 files in my desktop so that all the first letter of each in the title will be in upper case. Sort my art materials and papers which I just sort out the other day. Wake up late in the afternoon stressing about what to do next then ending up sweeping the floor I just swept before taking a nap. Some afternoon, I'd start the laptop running on my desk keen to finish some essay or narrative but feeling emptiness on its peak, I just watch the infinite white sheet with the blinking marker on the screen for hours.

Yes, I think I developed this kind of vacation-induced obsessive-compulsiveness in me, organizing and reorganizing things for the last 5 months. And occasional schizoid behavior. And yes, relapse of my coffee addiction. Basically, that's how my everyday went since I was out of school.

It's like I can wake up anytime of the day or not at all and people won't even notice. No teachers would be looking for you. No attendance to sign. No class president bugging you for your late project. And of course, no deadlines to beat. No nothing. I was always in 48 kg since high school and now I'm in 50. And I never felt so unoccupied since then. If I had been thinking so much, like I always do, I'd think my self-worth is just equal to 2 kg body weight, which is a lame relation but makes sense if you give it a second thought. But I am not thinking this time. Besides, Mushy said I will be missing this kind of sleep-eat-wake cycle forever. So I'm having this - break. Maybe it isn't that bad to just look around. Breathe. Watch the world spin around past you.

Being in this point, I realized how one heck of a rushee I was - always running so fast straight ahead - that a sudden stop from all of it would make me lose my sense of purpose. I kept myself busy with things that barely mean anything because I fear to lose whats left of my self-worth. I don't know if you can grasp anything from my jagged thoughts here. But I dare try painting a snapshot of what it looks like, from my own perspective now, on the verge of it. When you are running so fast you forgot the principle of certain things, like a pull over. There are things that you would only see when you set back. You realize that things are not in pure black and white, you start to see things in shades of grey. You see the details. You see the signs. And then you see infinite possibilities.

Read More