“God bless Mother Nature
She’s a single woman too.
She took on the heavens
And she did what she had to do.
She talked every angel
To rearrange the sky
So that each and every woman
Could find the perfect guy…..

…It’s raining men.”


How I wish.

***
Today was a relatively slow day in the office. Two of my lunch buddies, Marvin and Christian were absent. Only Lorraine and I were left eating our usual lunch – sandwich for me, tee hee.:)

I have to admit, today was a boring day. I didn’t do much today except file past RFAs (Request for Approval), RFIs (Request for Information), transmittals and like documents. The chore was okay for some time, but after a while of sorting through my boss’ terribly messed up files and bearing with the near freezing temperature without any sort of coat made me wish I was in the other room editing some plan.

I did get to edit some, after my boss came back from his weekly site visit/meeting from Alabang. In fact, I was listening to Geri the whole time while I was working on it.

I can’t help it. This song kept me from falling asleep. I highly recommend it….the song always manages to release the inner diva in me.=)

***
Day in and day out, life seems pretty much the same. I somewhat miss school. At least in school there’s always something to look forward to, something to learn each day, something different every day. Work…well, after a while of trying to differentiate one type of door knob from another kind of takes its toll from you.

I do appreciate the people at work, especially my boss and another senior architect in the office, Sir Jun. They’re not only the type to give me unsolicited lectures on materials and details of drafting, they rather encourage me to always do some self-study on whatever I could grab – whether a brochure, a book from the lib, or plans of previous projects. It is through them that I have realized what a wealth of information I have within my fingertips – it is up to me to decide whether to absorb this or not.


***
I look forward to weekends, despite the fact that I still see Saturday as an errand day rather as gimik day. At least I get to catch up with friends from school, and I get to be more myself.

Speaking of which, I would finally start on my long-overdue project to get some exercise! This Saturday, Celine and I would go swimming. Hehe, I’m excited!

Sidenote: You can finally upload pics in blogger?!? Shucks! Okay 'to ah...

MY WEEKEND

Well, nothing really much happened this weekend, although:

1) I FINALLY saw the film copies of each page from our yearbook already, and everything's all set for printing. Yay!
2) I saw Grimace in some kiddie party while I was dining in McDonalds. Cool. Damn! I should have brought a camera with me...I would very much like a picture with Grimace! Damn!
3) I hung out with Joyce and Mikey at Greenbelt, mostly talking about...insurance (lol), and people from college. It would be nice to spend Saturdays like that - just hanging around, talking about sensible (and not-so-sensible) things.
4) I saw Along Came Polly with my mom.

Now, that movie deserves special mention. I DIDN'T really like that movie. Or at least, it was a movie I'd rather watch on rented video rather on the big screen. Everything seemed lame...as lame as the French nudist scuba diver Reuben's (Ben Stiller) wife (Debra Messing) left him for.

Well, for those not in the know, the story started when Ben Stiller's wife left Ben for a guy on their first day of honeymoon. (The beefy guy is played by Hank Azaria.) Ben comes home, finds himself lonely (duh) and two weeks later...along came Polly.

Oh wow.

Anyway, Polly (Jennifer Aniston) is introduced in the movie as a former classmate of Reuben's from the seventh grade. After hours of meeting her, Ben decides that Polly must have come into his life for a reason. And so, he tries to contact her and eventually ask her out for a date.

Eventually, they find out that they are total opposites, but our two young lovers do not seem to mind that.

Waah...ayoko nang ikwento. It's so typical, you already know how the story ends. Ben and Jennifer don't even have chemistry, for crying out loud.:(

MOVIES AND MORE MOVIES
I wasn't able to watch Mean Girls. Darn.:( With that out of the way...most of the movie previews I watched earlier, well, I didn't like. Maybe Catwoman, but kanina was just a teaser.

Sigh. Corny manood ngayon.:(

  
 

3 DAYS WORTH OF KWENTO.

FRIDAY.
 
Mixed feelings
 
 I don’t know how to describe last Friday. 
 
On one hand, I felt lousy that day.  Supposedly, I was going to discuss with my boss about the things I found out in the course of writing the specifications mentioned for another project, but I hesitated since I don’t know how to bring it up.  So, seeing that I wasn’t doing anything. I was given another work by my boss on another project.  Sigh..what happened was, I did some booboos over another set of plans I was commenting on, the photocopying machine got jammed a couple of times while I was using it, and I spilled my mug of coffee on the floor. 
 
On the other hand, I was amused that day…over my boss.  That day, the library requested the return of all the books we borrowed from them.  (Our setup in the office lib: we can borrow books and keep them in our desk as long as we don’t bring them home.)  So while I was photocopying these thick set of plans (photocopying machine was located in our department), my boss was on his knees searching under the desks, cabinets, piles of brochures, trash etc. for the books that he borrowed.  Two words: BOOK HOARDER!  Promise.  Haha.:D  I even got the two copies of Architectural Graphic Standards he borrowed from the library from two people who got the books from his desk.  When I got down to return a book I had borrowed for myself, I found Sir Jun laughing his head off upon looking at the list of books my boss borrowed.  The list was REALLY long – some of the books on the list have been out around a year or so.
 
And upon leaving the office, my boss sweeped his desk clean of papers and junk.  Haha.:D
 
The Residences at Greenbelt
 
Going home from work, Marvin, Christian and I passed by the model unit of the Residences at Greenbelt. I was curious because it was a G.F. project, and also because I’ve never seen an actual model of a project before.  Christian has already seen it and encouraged me and Marvin to go look for ourselves. 
 
I was surprised to learn that the Residences at Greenbelt is designed to be a 48-storey building.  I really thought that it was just a couple of condo units right above those restaurants in Greenbelt.    Hindi pala.  By the time the building would be completed, it would totally dwarf G3 and New World.
 
Anyway I liked the interiors of the condo unit. It’s a lot similar to the other high rise project the firm is currently working on.  It’s very tasteful, classy…pang high-end talaga.  But I really thought that the two towers just look like your typical, run-of-the-mill skyscraper.  Actually, the towers look more like office buildings rather than residential buildings.  And climatic-responsive architects would have a lot to frown upon. 
 
SATURDAY.
 
Errand day
 
Saturdays are usually my errand days.  Sigh.  I wish I could do something about this and enjoy the day for a change, but some things couldn’t be helped.  Oh well.
 
Anyway, last Saturday was different from the usual.  My trip to Rounce, our official yearbook printer, was cancelled because the film copy of the yearbook for approval wasn’t ready yet.  As a consequence, I wasn’t able to visit Janrey, Joyce and Mikey since what I was supposed to give to them depended on that visit to Rounce.  And I didn’t feel like wasting my energy in trickles, so I just told them I’d meet them all at the same time next Saturday.  I’m sad not to see them though, although it would be a lot nicer to see them sans “official” errands.
 
I still had other stuff to do though.  One was meeting a friend in Rockwell.  Another was meeting a friend in Paranaque – I asked this friend to help me in Flash. 
 
SUNDAY.
 
Outreach activity
 
I gamely went on another journey with Celine today.  This time, it was an outreach project by some of Celine’s girl friends, Sydney and Melissa.  There were around six of us: the three I mentioned, Grace Edralin, Con con (didn’t get her last name) and myself.  We went to Maragondon in Cavite.  Sydney, the leader for this project, had a contact in Bgy. Pinagkaisahan in Maragondon.  This contact of hers mentioned some projects that could be pursued in the community, like tutorials for kids and promotion of livelihood projects.  And like most projects, ours started with doing a feasibility study – our main agenda for today was to survey some of the residents in the neighborhood.
 
So I found myself tagging along to probably my first outreach activity (pwede na ring site visit) outside school.  It was rather fulfilling – I mean, I just felt I was really volunteering.  Although I must admit it was quite disconcerting because I went with them thinking that we were to help out in a project similar to Habitat.  And of course, I felt that the whole idea was an ‘ambush’ type of volunteering – um, we just went there on our own, without representing any form of organization.  Hehe.  Siguro nasanay lang ako na I’d help people out through the things I’m familiar with.
 
Since we spent practically the entire morning just going to the site, we only had an hour before lunch.  My companions originally planned surveying only for half a day, so that left us with just one hour to survey.  What we did: we interviewed the barangay captain to get a general gist of what the people need in the community.  Sigh.  I think we need to go back again…
 
Anyway, we left the site with a lot of ideas in mind, mainly divided into two – SHORT TERM and LONG TERM.
 
SHORT TERM:  We could help out the community by giving tutorials to the kids in the neighborhood.  This project is more realizable – maybe we could go twice a month for this.  At present Melissa is going to make up a lesson plan (she was a former teacher) for us to use.  Giving tutorials means also gathering materials like old books and school supplies.  So to the readers: if you have materials to donate, if you want to volunteer as a teacher, or if you any other bright suggestions for this endeavor, please don’t hesitate to send me an email at mush1124@yahoo.com.
 
LONG TERM:  One of the community’s main source of income is harvesting bamboo and creating stuff like barbecue sticks out of it.  It remains to be a backyard industry though, and creating barbecue sticks out of bamboo is NOT a lucrative business.  Plus, they don’t have a cooperative where everything is more organized and regulated.  But since they’re doing stuff with bamboo…we were thinking a bamboo-based livelihood for the residents of the community, and there are just a lot of possibilities – but A LOT of people to approach to.  Using bamboo for architectural and structural purposes requires the expertise of bamboo scientists and specialists….  not to mention LGUs, potential sponsors, TLRC and other NGOs, researchers who are willing to study about bamboo, people willing to train the residents on doing export-quality products made out of bamboo.
 
In short, this project requires an EXTENSIVE FEASIBILITY STUDY.  Not to mention FUNDS. POLITICAL WILL. That sort of thing.
 
Yeah, I know that what I’ve just written spells skepticism all over it, but it’s still okay to consider all these possibilities, right?  I’m still figuring out where we as volunteers would place ourselves and how much effort we would commit to the project.
 
BAG OF BEANS
 
We vowed to go back two to three weeks from now.  We left Maragondon at past 2 p.m. and headed for Tagaytay. 
 
We wished for rain.  We got it.  And lightning too.  Yikes.:(
 
Anyway, we headed for Bag of Beans in Tagaytay since Sydney was craving for freshly baked English bread.  Celine also got curious because I have been raving about the place, the beautiful garden, and the yummy pies they have.
 
Oh well.  Sulit naman punta namin.  Super sarap nung bread!  We tried out two different loaves, and had coffee and milkshakes to go with it.  Again – super sulit ng coffee.  And ah, yummy.  Imagine foamy iced coffee at only 40 bucks!   It’s around the mid-size cup of frappe in Starbucks.
 
So there we were, sipping coffee, eating bread, and enjoying the outdoors while engaging in talk that’s more than mere gossip.:)  
 

From L to R: Melissa, Grace, Celine, myself, and Concon. 
  
 

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My first month at work.

Finally! I have solid internet connection. Yayness! I’ve been longing to post pics from work but posting the pics takes a long time to do.

Anyway, today marks my first month at work. I had a great day. Usually, I am behind a drafting table poring over plans and doing comment/edit jobs. But not today. I have more or less completed noting down the specs of a high rise residential from the architectural plans, and tomorrow we would discuss about the project in detail. My boss invited me to a product presentation - a supplier of a line of waterproofing systems presented their products to some of the senior architects in the office. What else? Oh yeah, I also got to use a PDF converter for the first time today. There were some autocad files that needed to be converted into a PDF file.

And when I got home, I heard great news. PLDT finally came and connected my landline! And I had freshly laundered sheets. Hehe, the simple joys of life. Nowadays, I take delight in the simplest of things.

I'm glad that at the end of my first month I have finally settled into my job. At times, I don't feel like I have a job - I feel like I'm on some extended vacation, and I'm likening this internship/apprenticeship to the summer workshops I attended when I was younger. I just don't deal with deadlines and terror bosses just yet. And I get to learn a lot - the most important thing.

I've written some articles on work while I was on internet hiatus.

THE THINGS I SEE AT WORK.

(notice the word AT. I still don’t feel like I’m working FOR the firm. Yet.)


Anyway, I took a picture of my boss’ messy desk. Hehe, nagsalita. My ‘place’ (I shuttle between my space in the specs dept and the vacant place of one of senior architects – I need the drafting table for the plans I’m commenting on.) is also messy, although it has been that way ever since I used it – people dump file copies of different projects on the table behind my desk. My boss’ desk looks somewhat neat from the pic but believe me, only a guy can really work in his place. I dare not touch anything for fear of misplacing anything he’s currently working on.


I usually walk from the office to Ayala – it seems safer to ride in Ayala than in Buendia. Besides, I get to muse while walking though the area’s residential neighborhood (Salcedo Village), and I normally walk to Ayala with friends from work. I normally go out through the HV dela Costa exit. From there, I just let the shaded walkways guide me to Ayala.


Around two blocks from the office is this park. I pass by under the trellis arcade built on the sidewalk adjacent to the park. The park is surrounded by the high rise condominiums. As you can see from the pic it is well-lighted, and people really use the open area. On my way home from work I always see children playing and people walking their dogs around in this park.

I like that this park is successfully integrated with the neighboring residential towers… normally, I only see this type of park in villages with single detached homes. And even then…well, some parks I’ve seen in residential villages, such as the one in Dasmarinas, they aren’t really used by the residents.


From the park, I cross the street, walk a little bit, and then I turn on a corner. On the end of that street is the Paseo Center. The building is nice – mostly contains cafés and restaurants. I haven’t tried out any though, since it’s far from the office and there’s no reason for me to go there beyond six. I also see the tower portion of Tower One from across the street.

At the corner of Paseo I go down and cross the street through the pedestrian underpass.


When I emerge from from the underpass, I enter the park behind Tower One. It still has a walkway that leads to the main arcade of Tower One.

***
FRIENDS AT WORK.
I sometimes walk alone, and sometimes with my friends from work. Specifically, that’s Marvin and Christian, my co-apprentices at work. Lorraine, the other and only girl apprentice aside from me, usually gets a ride from her dad after work.

At work, I mostly have guys for friends. The guys at G.F. are friendlier in general – they remind me a lot of Kuya Nap and company when I was a freshman in U.P. The other girls in the firm are older and they have their own set of friends (guys and girls alike) na most likely kasabay nila mag-work dun or something.

Probably, Lorraine is the “closest” I have for a female friend in G.F., but as of now more of lunch buddies than close friends. She’s usually the last one in, first one out of the office. And I don’t work in close proximity to them so that doesn’t help me much.

Besides, I really am more at ease with befriending guys in general. With girls, you have to be careful with what you say, how you act…you have to make a favorable impression, and you can never second guess what’s on their minds… girls think too much. I guess it’s easier to be just oneself around guys, they can take crap and they won’t think too much about it.


***
SWITCHING BACK TO BLOGGER.

So maybe I won't be entirely switching back to blogger. But I so like their new format! Hehe. I'll be maintaining two blogs for the meantime, to accommodate both blogger and blurty friends. I'll be posting the same article on both accounts.