Last Update

Oh wow this is still here?

The last entry is dated over a month ago. I have no excuse.

Actually there is one. Notice how cluttered the Multiply interface has gotten? Yeah that's all I got.

This isn't an alcohol-induced post, by the way. For those you need to check Twitter.

Anyway. I still do want to write but there's really nothing that comes to mind that's coherent enough to be seen in print. Not that coherence is a requirement or anything, but I do want to read these stories at some point in the future and not have to do all the work of putting together these fragments and figuring out the point. I'm sure I will be too busy figuring out the present/future.

You know what I think I should've done? Stopped right after the Cincy posts and started a different series/blog. That way there'd be no pressure of trying to keep it running. Oh well.

So until I figure out what the heck I want to say - or another story worth writing comes my way - this site is on hiatus.

(While I was thinking of something to write about the thought crossed my mind that maybe like the other blog this thing has simply taken its course. I was half-serious about the interface thing. Maybe I should try out Tumblr or something.)

Random Europe Moment I

My brother and I toured Europe with some family friends and a group of Australians on a tour package in 2003. During one of the nighttime visits to a wine bar/restaurant (I'm thinking this was just outside of Venice but I could be wrong) everyone was just hanging out after dinner enjoying glasses of wine when one of the elderly Aussies suddenly shouted:

"Where's my camera?!?"

She began to shout hysterically. "It was just here!" Everyone started to help her look around for it while her husband was trying to clam her down. But she still went on, "where's my camera?!?"

This went on for around ten minutes when someone finally pointed at her arm and said, "There it is!" Sure enough, her camera was slung around her elbow and she said sorry and everyone had a good laugh afterward.

Later when everything died down my brother whispered to me, "I swear, we were like, five seconds away from 'I'm sure one of you Filipinos took it!'"

Decade In Review (2000-2003) Part II

Yes I know it's March. Get off my case.

2004. Looking at the photos I had from 2004, I guess it was a weird year and maybe not exactly the year my career "went to hell". On one hand, it was the year me and my brother went to tour Europe for two weeks, and on the other (and just two weeks after my European tour),I went to the US (Salt Lake City, Utah) for work. The Europe trip deserves a review all its own so we'll leave that for later. As for the US trip, well, on the very first night I was there I got a fever and skipped the very first day of work, and had to self-medicate with whatever they had at the gas station next to the motel. I'm not sure I was staying at a motel but it sure as hell was not a hotel.

On the other hand, I discovered the awesomeness that is Krispy Kreme a few weeks before the first branch opened here at The Fort.

My three-month long stay was cut short because I decided to start a long-distance hate affair with the office back home. I'm partly kidding. But the ending of all this is covered in this post. I spent the last two months of the year unemployed and well, happy. Started this blog in November that year.

Other notables: Fete at Eastwood in the two weeks between the two major trips. Talking with Donut Girl over YM because she was the only one on the late shift back home. Boracay for the first time. Christmas at Alabang Town.

2005. I was unemployed for most of 2005. The personal projects I promised myself that I'd get into never really materialized except maybe for one: finally studied art at the Vargas Museum in UP Diliman, where basically I was surrounded by five-year olds and Kathy Tan.

When all my savings dried up, finally looked for work and ended up having a record five interviews with eTelecare. I guess they couldn't tell if I was applying to get a job or a girl. Eventually one of us gave up on the other, and I'd like to think it was me.

Finally got in contact with one of my old companies sub-contractors and got a job with them. On the first day they assigned me to RCG, and for better or for worse, that reminded me that I could still do this job.

2006. Quit RCG (why of course, everyone does) to work at the big, bad top-10 Forbes-listed multinational company, and I guess, here I am. Everything (well, mostly) is here in this journal. It's kind of slowed down because of Twitter but some stories can't be told in 140 characters no matter how much you cut it up.

I need to tell better stories.

Was there a point to this review? Maybe not. But there's no point to anything, really. I am drunk.

Decade In Review (2000-2003)

So.

I'm not really good at introductions (and you could probably tell that from the first sentence), and I don't know why. Maybe it's because introductions eventually lead to first impressions and I suck at that even more.

That's how this journal started way back in November 2004, a month after I resigned from my first real long-term work assignment. So most of the decade is actually on this thing anyway.

But for some reason I'm still compelled to make a review of the 00's. (What were they called again? The Aughties?) I don't know why. Maybe it's because by the time you turn 20 there are a lot of things about oneself that stop changing. I mean, you don't, but there are going to be some things that stick.

So here it is, a year-by-year play-by-play, looking back at the decade I went to work. Or pretended to, anyway.

(Might have to break this up into smaller pieces or this will never get "published".)



2000. I was disappointed when the Y2K big didn't hit because that meant I had to start looking for work. I started writing for a local newspaper...in Tagalog. That lasted all of three months before it was clear that I sucked at my native tongue and decided the only thing left to do was to just go back to school. Studied Java at IBM-ACE and never looked back. Well, I am right now, but you get the point. Played in a band that played almost exclusively at weddings.

Late 2000, got an interesting phone call from Her saying we would never see each other again. But we did, didn't we?

2001. Finished my courses and took a job at an software development startup company. That lasted (AGAIN) all of three months as the internet bubble-burst caught up with me/us. The company that was supposed to buy us out just, well, bought me instead. I suppose I got hugely unpopular to my officemates right about then. Three months into the new job I was convinced that I hated it. I ended up staying for three and a half years.

Oh yeah, 2001 also included that awesome night on Valero street, but that's another story that comes up in bits and pieces whenever I play "I Never".

2002. That was a steady year I guess. Went on my first plane ride, to HK, not realizing I would be on quite a number of plane rides in the future. Got into my first car accident after celebrating the 1st Ateneo basketball championship since 1988. Another friend dies in another car accident a couple of months later, coming home from our own Christmas party. I guess I'm lucky this blog post doesn't end here.

2003. Another steady year; I'm going through the pictures and it's all pretty much vacations and birthday parties and weddings. Which is basically what there should be photos of anyway. I guess we were all pretty somber that year following that tragedy. Oh, played in the ABL for the first time and registered basically one point. One point on one made free throw. One made free throw...after I was fouled...on a three-pointer.

Next: 2004. Ah, the year my career goes to hell.

Year In Review

An original title for an original concept.

(Well I didn't want to spend all afternoon thinking of a clever title and never get to the actual article. I won't even bother with a picture.)

(Then I also realized I had no such summary for 2008. I had one post each that January and that previous December. So why bother with this at all? Eh.)

Most everyone on these internets hated 2009, what with the floods, tragedies, celebrity deaths and personal losses. And we've got more than enough record of that. I guess I just wanted to point out the best of '09. At least for me.

I saw more rock shows in '09 than any other year I can remember, maybe more than all the other years combined. Top five bands seen the most number of times, in descending order: Taken By Cars, Us-2 Evil-0, Techy Romantics, Up Dharma Down, Turbo Goth. Yes there's a pattern to all of that, and it's exactly what you think. And mostly because they all show up in the same night anyway.

(I also bought more albums this year since 2001. Why 2001? We'll get to that in the Decade in Review, if we ever get there.)

We also played live to an audience not made entirely up of officemates, so that has to count for something, too.

Discovered and rediscovered the awesomeness that is Distillery for a record 8 straight weeks, and moving to McKinley Hill winning me over in the end.

Work was still blah, but then again in that regard no news is good news. But I did get promoted this year, although I'm not really counting that as a highlight. Would've been a highlight if there was some money involved.

This is also the year I started living by myself. I almost wrote there "living alone" but it sounded depressing. Well in a sense it didn't last, but it's a start. As far as chances to start living independently I'll take it. And in probably the most awesome corner of Makati too.

I've written about record bad-five-day stretches before. 2009 gives me its candidate with one of the worst 4-day stretches I can remember. But this is a best-of so we'll leave that for now. Besides I got over that pretty quickly because...

2009 had the best 6-day stretch in recent memory. It starts with the Thursday that Ateneo won its back-to-back championship up to the Tuesday that following week. I shan't elaborate on any of this.

So I guess this is thanks if you were somehow involved with any of these, and if you weren't, you can make it up to me in 2010.