Yes, another day. Currently waiting for the food I ordered with the people here in the office. Together with that, I am wondering if starting a food blog or kicking off with posts about food would be nice. I posted some foods before but not really that many since I was still in college that time and spending frequently on food, especially those I haven’t tried, may not be a good idea. Now that I have part-time work, I might be able to go to certain places to write about the food I can eat there.

Actually, I’m still confused on what hobby to take. I mean, I can take as many hobbies I can but I want to focus for a certain amount of time on one hobby. For example, right now I am torn between saving for the Radio-Control Vehicle from Tamiya or getting a personally-prepped gaming laptop from Asus. Food trips can actually go on a different road because I can just be spontaneous and say “Oh, I’ll try to eat here today/sometime”, then it can take place. Food is somewhat accessible. Photography is still something I can’t really afford, maybe when I get a better job. The R/C and the laptop are both in priority because it’s related to my field and it’s something obtainable with my income.

Why food? It’s actually part of my plans to learn the different cultures roaming about in this country. I’ve started this initiative when I joined my friends in the fiesta in Balanga, Bataan. Now it’s time to set a new destination.

Hopefully, with all of these actions and a finale of Vitamin C later, I’ll be able to review for the upcoming weekly exam on Saturday.

Today’s the first day of the NI LabVIEW training that I signed up for. This is just too cool as the NI representative who went to give the very first part of the training, said that this training is actually the same training that they’re giving to the other parts of the world. Yes, this is world-class. Though I have to sacrifice the whole week of review for this but in exchange for a training certificate that’s recognized around the world.

I miscalculated my waking-up time this morning and as a result, only a can of Coke for breakfast. Not the sort of stomach intake that you’d want for a whole-day session that consumes a lot of sugar. Good thing I never shut my eyes during the lectures because the whole exercise is just to awesome. It was also the first time that the laboratory was put to good use and was fully operational with me in it and involved. The program is so good that I wanted a whole set of data acquisition equipment, and that NI Elvis that is a portable prototyping device. Couple that to a computer equipped with the necessary interaction devices and you’d forget about oscilloscopes and other means of representing your data acquired.

After the training, I went to buy cracker nuts and go for another can of Coke. I waited for my Dad to call me for going home and then the rain came. The rain was so strong that the weather station beside me recorded some high values that made me think “there’s no need to look at the window if it’s raining hard”.

I can’t go out of the office because I am starting to feel sick and I don’t want the rain to make it worse. So I had a coffee float from Jollibee and waited until the rain weakened. I almost killed a frog while trying to chase my parents before they close the office. Then, arriving home, just ate leftover spaghetti and, again, softdrinks but this time, it’s rootbeer.

Meh. :3

It’s quite interesting how these events became so shocking. I mean, I’ve encountered such events but God always have some sort of tricks up His sleeves. It’s like playing Counter-Strike with God, letting God himself to play fair as much as he can. He’s just too good in such games. But I know I can still get up and then play the game again. So I guess, I’m back to my usual routine. From home, I go to school, take some time for sleep or studying, then eat lunch and go to review, review then go back to school. For the rest of the days every week, I go to work. I wonder where to blow the next set of checks? >:) Naaah, I’m going to save ‘em, for now.

*sips from a can of cream soda*

Oh, by the way, Mom gave me a tight hug after I told her about these events. She sure does know how to make me calm down. One of my ultimate guides in life, my mom. I remember when I go to her office every afternoon and we just simply chat about what happened with our day. Now, I do talk with more people every afternoon in the office. Then I gave my whole first ever check from my part-time work to my Mom. I told her that if the payment to the board review is just fine within her expenses, she can spend the check to her heart’s delight. I don’t know where’s the money but it’ll be nice if she’d buy herself a new pair of shoes or a new bag since she rarely treats herself with such things.

*sigh*

This weekend sure is jam-packed. Now I have to “reprogram” myself once again and now it should be according to the goal that I set at the start of this year.

Banzai~!

Just a joke. Let’s go.

Anyway, yesterday was my Mom’s birthday and also my mentor’s. Though yesterday was a shot full of happy events, I did encounter an unfortunate one for me. Sure, it did test my strength yet again but I did not expect this to come so soon. “What a gigantic lump of failure..” I thought. I don’t know what God is planning right now that every step I make do have that sort of feeling that there’s a ditch around and I can’t see it and there’s a tendency that I can fall in it. Yeah, series of unfortunate events for me, I guess but I’m figuring out why as everything should have a reason for happening or occuring. Not even alcohol can help, not even using material things like games or new pair of shoes can compensate. It really was another point-blank attack and I haven’t even got out considerably far.

So, all I can do that day was “laugh” again. Laugh, what went wrong, again?

What’s just nice is that I’ve kept myself busy recently. It’s not to drown out the bad stuff but to seek improvements for myself, where I lack, where to boost. Like what a friend of mine said, spend the time discovering yourself more. At some point, I am thankful for such events. At least it showed me the new boundaries of expectations to things that I wanted to happen or achieve. Disappointed? At start of course, but it’s pointless to be like that forever. I just need to remember what the people around me told me about my potential.

Yeah, I can do this. I got this.

Well, here goes a new chapter.

While everyone’s going to Boracay and other places where beaches and resorts are present, I did not have enough, say budget, to get to those places. In fact I do have the time, it’s just that I don’t want getting any budget from my parents to get to such places. But then a friend of mine said that there’s a celebration in their place and in turned out to be the City of Balanga, Bataan. I’ve been to Bataan but it was Morong that I visited, close to the nuclear plant situated in that place and I even went to Mt. Samat to see that gigantic cross standing above the mountain. So I got curious to visit this part of Bataan, Balanga. I’ve heard it before but I can’t remember when and where. Nevertheless, my friend said that we will be staying there on Saturday and immediately return at night. When I got there, I was quite astonished (yet again, Bataan) by the place.

We arrived there few hours before Saturday. We slept for a while, got up and went to a park that’s under construction. The sunrise from that shore was beautiful. I remember the time when I went to Morong for the beach and the sunset, and this was equally, quite simply, one of the beautiful scenes I’ve seen in my life.

I love the place, how quiet and calm it is, even the subdivisions. I’m actually happy to see that each barangay has its own chapel/church. A lot of people go to the park but it’s not like in the urban areas where it seems so irritating because of the noise. This place, no matter how many people go, seems so…calm.

We ended the day by placing frisbee at the park and met with two more friends who were staying nearby. It was fiesta but I only saw part of it. Next time I should stay for a longer time to see how things in that place pan out. By 8pm, we went to the bus station and got a ride back to Manila.

There’s beach but I did not swim simply because there’s not enough time but the scenery’s enough to make me relax and with good people around, this vacation was more than fulfilling and exciting. I’d love to visit this place once more. preferably when things are as lively as the time we went there.

Happy!

For one, I started saving for  my future (though I haven’t opened the account) so I dedicated part of the reward to the savings. I had to pay a debt to a friend who’s so very kind to let me pay until this point with no additional fees. It’s funny before this post, I was doing some accounting of my expenses of the day and I said “what in the world am I doing?” but I guess I really need to keep track of what I get and what I vaporize.

Ah, yes. I kept the receipts for today and most likely I will the ones in the future. 

I even wrote down the ones with no receipts and at the end of the day, I encoded everything into a spreadsheet, including the money I have left. It’s a nice feeling but then a very strict management of expenses would be demanded from this point on, especially that I have enlisted myself as a part-time project staff in school.

Nevertheless, the feeling of getting what you worked for is soooo good. This is pretty much like getting a high score from an ELC exam but this one feels different as a different reward comes out. Also, this time I am not learning academics but instead, work ethics, relationships and environment and how one will adapt to a certain work place. However, no matter how much excitement the reward can bring, one must still think of big responsibility on how to use that reward. Unlike academic marks, this reward vanishes! It’s all up to you how to use it to your advantage or let yourself indulge in a relaxing way, hoping you won’t realize you’ve wasted it in the end.

For now, all parts of the reward are in place and I have nothing left again in my wallet to spend for myself or other people. I need to reserve just in case of emergency.

…and can I say, God surely will make you happy. this is not because of the reward but the thought behind it. God will give you the difficulties you can handle and then make you smile at the end.

I do tend to become disappointed at some things that fail me, whether my effort or someone else’s effort as long as it’s a failure that cripples me down. But I’m trying to regain the optimism I established during the first two years of my college life, which is actually by doing again and again what I did not realize before: accept the humiliation. In fact, my spiritual director told me “…learn how to make fun of yourself.”. I don’t know why this supposed-to-be-second-nature way of thinking vanished. Nevertheless, I’m trying to bring it back. I was bombarded by a lot of things that kept me frustrated for the past few hours but I’m keeping my guard up, trying to be positive as much as possible.

I have to be like that, simply because I just entered the so-called “real world”. I have to be good at forming connections, whether professional, close (and closer) relationships or simply friends.

I do love making reflections most of the time. Not being an “emo” but it really gives me time to relax and to work stuff out. Sometimes, personal satisfaction like food (nothing beyond that, ehem) would do. For example, I’d buy myself, out of the blue, one order of milk tea just to calm myself down. Or run around the campus. A friend of mine took me to a beautiful spot overlooking Marikina while jogging and it was really a very nice place.

2:20PM : Just got my salary from Chinabank. so happeh. I guess God will eventually make you smile at the end of the day, no  matter how grim things are from your perspective.

Yeah, I know, it’s another Blackberry but this time, I will be holding this until I ditch it. It’s an old one but they still make it, the 8520 Curve. It was the cheapest BB you can buy during its time alongside with the Bold and the Torch. This particular unit actually had problems with its keyboard though probably because of the people who used it. In fact, if you will observe it properly, the rubber part of the body is completely removed. I don’t know what kind of sorcery they have but that’s how much damage the phone got. It even lost the silver paint on the back cover’s logo, completely erased. ) Anyhow, it’s now in my possession and what are the things I noticed?

First, you really need Blackberry services to get the most out of this phone and, I assume, to the rest of the lineup. I was fiddling with this first without a sim card and it took me quite a while (without looking at the manual, online) to get the internet from a hotspot, working. This means that if you’re like me who’s used to uber-super-user-friendly interface like Nokia phones or HTC’s Androids, you’d really have a difficult time configuring this phone unless you really refer to the manual. In fact, at the last minute, I decided to go for BB’s online interactive manual and I did not get anything good from it. I kept switching and switching options until I get the WiFi internet working by turning on the Data services, which at first I thought was only applicable to the service provider. Then, the Facebook, Twitter and probably most of the applications will only work with BB services. So your last resort for accessing social networks would be the browser(I guess).

Second, getting the radio was difficult if you are afraid of switching “Mobile Network” because it may suddenly charge you internet fees but in fact, that was the radio switch to enable your phone search for you service provider’s signal.

Third, I think it also has the hibernation feature that recent Android phones integrated to their systems. For example, if I turn off the device using the power button, it would turn off and turn on quick. However, removing the battery and putting it back would give the device quite a significant amount of time to boot. I like it.

Fourth, BB made me realize that I am no good with tiny keyboards, even if they are already physical keys.

However, this isn’t really a bad device overall. The build quality is solid, as you can see how much damage it got and still everything inside it works perfectly. And the simplicity of the graphical user interface is just mind-boggling. I mean, talking about aesthetics, HTC’s Sense is just too awesome and BB’s GUI is on the other extreme. It’s so good because it’s just so simple. Though I haven’t really gone deep as some say the battery life’s bad but that’s probably because of the Data usage. I’m going to hold this for now and see how it goes for someone like me, who’s more used now to touch devices. In fact, when a message window appears, I kept poking the screen, hoping I’d click the “OK” button. )

I must say, even after a day, I’m not a “BB” user but I also admit that it was fun. Today, all the phones within my reach were utterly useless with both mobile phones out of credits and the landline isn’t working. So brother left that phone above to let me have something to use whenever I need to contact key persons for today.

So, what’s the 9700 like from a developer’s perspective  ooor a touch-screen device user? IT’S HARD! I will talk about this device based on my usage today, which is the daily dose of text messages and calls. I am veeeeeeery thankful for the physical keyboard as my fingers missed it a lot. Though the problem is my hands were so used to touch screens that it needs quite a significant area to touch. Which means, that when pressing the 9700′s small keys, it was as difficult as the virtual keyboard on my HTC in pressing. I had to press BackSpace a couple of times for pressing the wrong key. Given that the keyboard’s arranged in the standard QWERTY layout, I can’t believe how difficult it is for me to press the right keys. Second, the call was also a difficult one if you’re a BB noob. I don’t even know how to start a call by dialing the number. All I see when I press a button, which is the number on the keyboard, is a contact search window. xD It was difficult for me today to make the calls and texts but I guess it’s a matter of getting used to the thing. After all, it’s meant for business people and some socializing.

I’m not bashing BlackBerry here by all means, in fact I find this device quite interesting. Though I haven’t fiddled with it too much but I find the graphical user interface quite simple and elegant, not painful to the eyes. The navigation throught the interface is quite tricky but get used to it and you’d be fine. The styling of the devices of BlackBerry have that uniqueness factor. Even the services have a unique approach. I find the BIS/BBM as “another Social network” but something that would not be perished because of a dominating entity though it depends on the service provider, I guess.

Overall, I think it’s a so-so device. It’s hard to use from my perspective because I’m used to touch-screen devices and I haven’t been in the physical QWERTY device world. But the simplicity and elegance caught my attention and that’s why despite the difficulty of using one, I enjoyed it.