Another Lovely Surprise!

Yesterday I received another award from an awesome fella, a super mom and a wonderful blogger - i'm no miss. Thank you soooooooo much! It's so nice of you to pass the ONE LOVELY BLOG award to me.

Two awards in a week! I say that's A-M-A-Z-I-N-G!

You guys are great! Don't spoil me too much I might get used to it hahaha!

Now I want to share this lovely award to the following lovely ladies:

1.) Rachel W. - Faithful Fashionista

2.) Lorna - Getting Legless with Lorna

Have fun!

fed up with CEBU PACIFIC!!! (Part 2: The Sorry Story)

This post is actually a sequel to my unfinished rant on my supposed "FREE FLIGHT" privilege from Cebu Pacific. I was pondering whether to blog this or not because I don't want to sound like a senile, old woman fuming over some petty, insignificant matters. But as expected my impulses and annoyance got the better of me and I thought that unloading these shrapnels of disappointment would be a better way to get even (at least) with them.

So I went a bit overboard and called up nine times already since last week. In case you're wondering if I don't ever get tired? Well, I do and I'm totally fed up. Imagine how many times they had to put  me on hold while they check on their records. I was disconnected twice and I would redial and wait for a good three minutes before the call went through. I patiently obeyed, not a single whine, when they said to call back after 24 hours coz they have to re-evaluate, re-check, re-validate my concern. Notice the prefix "re", it's getting on my nerves! And so after I e-mailed the scanned copy of the callling card they gave to me at the airport, at the time of my disrupted flight, I was keeping my hopes up that I would FINALLY get that fucking FREE FLIGHT.

The operator, in her most soothing, sympathetic voice (take note that I was already on the phone for five minutes and have been put on hold twice) broke the sorry news to me. MY FREE FLIGHT VOUCHER IS INVALID.

Wait. Say that again?

My free flight voucher is invalid.

After all the calling, the follow-up, which totally made me look like I'm a cheapskate, this is the answer I'm gonna get??? What the ****!!!!
The reason? Cancelled flights due to bad weather do not entitle a free flight. Apparently, their staff made a mistake of issuing a travel voucher to the passengers.

Fine.

I was trying to be in my best behavior despite the nagging feeling, the clenching fist and the urge to transform into a psycho-freak godzilla. I've been running profane words in my head that I wanted to scream at them while my mouth is ready to curse at 60 words per minute at any given time. Before my sight went blank I took a deep breath and told the operator I'm fine with it and put down the phone. (I really wanted to slam the receiver but I'm not willing to pay for the damage.)

Here's my message to CEBU PACIFIC :
SUCK.YOUR.FREE.FLIGHT!

CRAP!

You made us (me in particular) fool at your scheming tactics by not informing us right away that it was all a mistake!


I was on that special flight which you set up the following day for those passengers whose flight have been disrupted, yet no one bothered, no, make that CARED to inform us that the travel voucher you issued was a fucking piece of shit!

What an efficient system you have. You made me call nine times before you finally figured this is another slip-up on your part?!


Well, thank you for making my day. I really look forward to fly with you soon! (note sarcasm on the tone)


P.S. I really wanted to throw more harsh words to them but i'm no miss sent me ONE LOVELY BLOG AWARD this morning. Yayyy!!! That definitely made my day and mellowed my rage. I'll be posting it tomorrow since I wouldn't surely sound lovely after I've blown my top.




Related post : fed up with CEBU PACIFIC!!!

I got tagged!!!

I thought today's going to be another awful Monday. But hey, I was wrong. I was oblivious to the surprise that awaits me. I got T-A-G-G-E-D!!!!!!!!! By no other than Gnetch , a fellow 20sb member and whom I consider one of my haven't-met-personally friends in the blogosphere.


Thank you Gnetch!!! Mwaahh! I've said this already and I'm saying it again - You're the first one to give me this!!!! (I hope there'll be more to come, yikes!!!) hahahaha!!

I'm soooooooo happy to have received this HAPPY 101 award! It means a lot to me. Being new to this whole blogging thing, I can't help but feel overwhelmed to the responses, appreciation, welcome by the 20sb gang. I don't know them personally but they all had compassionate and kind words for me and it makes blogging a lot more enjoyable.


Since my brain cells are now in full-function mode. I re-read Gnetch's post and finally understood (after 48 years hahaha!) If someone receives this award you have to thank that person, which I already did and I don't intend to sound like a broken record. In this case, you have to list the things that make you happy and pass on the award by tagging your friends.

Here we go :

Things that make me happy

1.) Whenever I get the chance to go home (in my hometown) and spend time with my mother and my dog. I work faraway from home and I kinda miss them most of the time.

2.) Travel. Travel. Travel.

3.) When I'm not working (Saturday, Sunday & Holidays)

4.) When I'm eating chocolates and pizza (I guess the right word would be "delighted" but anyway chocolates do make you happy)

5.) Payday

6.) When I have a new gadget

7.) Shopping for clothes and shoes (ewwww..I didn't know I'm materialistic! tsk, tsk...)

8.) When the program I'm working on runs.  Or else I'm running my way out hahaha!

9.) When someone says nice things to me or they appreciate my actions

10.) When someone leaves a comment on my posts or on my FB account. You're feedback means a lot to me. It's another way of showing you care huhuhuhu....

11.) When someone becomes a follower

12.) When someone reads my blog (even if they don't leave comments)

13.) When someone gives me a gift especially if it's a tweety bird stuff.

14.) When I'm hanging out with friends

15.) When I read a good book

16.) When I hear my favorite song

17.) When the weighing scale says I'm losing weight, yay!!!!!

18.) When it's time to go home after a hard day's work!

19.) Concerts

20.) Party

Haaayyyyy...I could go on forever. There's just too many things that make me happy and so many things to be thankful about.

And for the tagging part :
1.) judz - I Still Can't Think of a Decent Blog Title
2.)  kira - UT Four Point Zero
3.) jill - Jillie Side Up
4.) megha - Thinking Hat

If you HATE MONDAYS then we really should be friends

First of all, I would like to thank The Bangles for coming up with song Manic Monday. Hahaha! I think my intro was way too serious. The lyrics couldn't have been more perfect for someone who truly loathes poor Monday. They must have been thinking about us working girls and all the hassles and stress we go through while writing the song.

Here are my top reasons why I want to abolish Monday from the calendar :

1.) Maybe it's just me but I really find it hard getting out of bed on Monday morning. My alarm would went off 4-5 times before I practically pull myself out of bed and take a shower. 

2.) Maybe it's just me again but the traffic seems heavier on Mondays. I assume the number of people that go to work and to school, so as the number of public and private vehicles off the streets on Monday morning are relatively the same on the other days. So what's up with the traffic jam especially when you're running late?

3.) Monday it is so you're looking ahead at 4 more days before emancipating yourself from work slavery. Aryt, I'm just talking about how work appeals to me.

4.) I hate meetings and Mondays are full of that. Meeting here. Meeting there. Meeting everywhere! 

5.) I need to make room for myself after a weekend's hang-over. And speaking of hang-over, did you know that I often have momentary memory lapse on what's my job suppose to be because my brain cells are malfunctioning and have not yet recovered from the weekend's blast? Well, it's my other way of saying I'm not really myself come Monday.

Aside from those raves and why I feel like campaigning Monday to become a rest day (three rest days in a row, yay!!!), today is another terrible-day-in-the-making. Here's why :

I wasn't able to sleep a good 8 hours because our fucking neighbor and a bunch of his asshole friends had a drinking session last night. You know how it is when you're intoxicated? (a.) You're noisy. (b.) You'd throw a joke that's not even funny and you're jerk friends would laugh out loud but they don't even know why they're laughing in the first place. (c.) You'd think you're a singer and tries to carry a tune that even Elvis Presley would feel sick in his grave. (d.) You're just simply annoying and NOISY!

If I hadn't been considerate to my roomate I would have snarled and threw small rocks at them. Of all the days and the nights, they unmindfully chose to booze on a Sunday night. Damn!!! How I wished they'd choke on their own vomit. Yuck!!!

So I woke up feeling sluggish coz I have no choice but to come early for work. Apparently we have visitors and we need to prepare for our morning activity so I was on my feet when the alarm clock screamed.

When I walked into the office, the visitors were nowhere in sight! They postponed. Urrgghhh!!!

Then come the meeting...

My boss is making innuendos that we're going to be busy in the next couple of months. Read : we're going to render overtime starting next month. OH. MY.GOD. Loads of work + overtime + monday blues = I would like to stop working for the next two months!

I don't usually complain about work coz I love my job. But the management has been a pain in the ass lately changing directions from time to time. And because I'm a mere employee-slash-programmer-slash-technical support, I have no choice but to abide to their wishes and reprogram their brains, I mean the system.

Ok I don't mean to sound rant-y. It's just that Mondays are full of bad news and it gets into my nerves. Not to mention my PC is making me exasperated right now. Why do my boss have to run the anti-virus in the middle of the day for christsake?! Doesn't he know it will cause the computer to slow down? I'm working on a very important task right now - my blog. Hahahaha!!!!

Lord, help me make it through the day.

Great Monday everyone!

Whaaattt??! I have ADHD?! (shock)

My body has a weird reaction to coffee - it makes me sleepy. I told my friends about it and they all just laughed at me. The kind of laugh that tells you "are you out of your mind?". Fine! I get their point. Caffeine is suppose to perk you up not slump you down.

Incident #1 : One time my bestfriend and I decided to chill in her place. We were both craving for ice coffee so off we went to Starbucks and grabbed my favorite caramel macchiato. Back in her place, I was lying on my belly at the cot, eyes glued on National Geographic channel, downing the last drop of my coffee when I started to feel tipsy. You know that feeling when you had a couple of beers? We were in the middle of our conversation when my eyes could no longer hold it and I drifted to dreamland in an instant. The next morning she told me I slept sound while she didn't. See?

Incident #2 : I always have an afternoon crash like most people do. I feel sleepy-slash-tired-slash-bored when the clock strikes between 1PM to 3PM. I would have coffee by then to keep my focus intact. But even after finishing the second cup, drowsiness gets even worse.

It  happens everytime I drink coffee and it begins to puzzle me. Why oh why? So I googled it, surprised to learn I'm not the only one who suffers from this odd symptom. I went on to read one post at Yahoo ANSWERS and I froze :

" Relaxation from stimulants is one of the physiological indicators of ADHD. All the meds they use to treat this condition are SPEED, pure speed. May not be the only reason. Caffeine often helps people focus when they have ADHD " 

Wait a sec! What did I just read?

Are they implying I have ADHD? Wow! I mean that's the most mind-blowing thing since that bum cheated on me. Come on...! I know what those people with ADHD are like and I never had behavioral issues such inattentiveness ( i once got the most attentive award in grade school. would you believe that?), hyperactivity (but you can often see me in a dance number at the school program) and impulsiveness (the only time i'm impulsive is when i like a guy. just kidding!)

I was in pure disbelief so I dig in for another answer and here's what I found:

" Psychologically speaking, you may have coffee in your mind as a part of a relaxing ritual, similar to that sleepy feeling you get from hot chocolate or warm milk...in which case it will not be the picker upper it's supposed to be. "

Thank God I'm relieved to hear that! But I don't deny the fact I'm paranoid sometimes. Better paranoid than sorry, they say, so I googled the signs and symptoms of ADHD in adults. Take a look at some facts below. If 70% of those magnifies your personality then it's time to see a shrink.

• Chronic lateness and forgetfulness. - I'm tardy and forgetful sometimes but in general I have a good memory and I hate people who show up late especially those who never show up because they simply forgot.
   
• Anxiety -none that  I remember.
   
• Low self-esteem. - Not guilty!
   
• Employment problems. -  Yes but the typical ones only. I guess every employee at some point in his/her career have had problems.
   
• Difficulty controlling anger. - I count 1 to 10. I take a deep breath and then growl haha!
   
• Impulsiveness. - check out above explanation.
   
• Substance abuse or addiction. - No way! Never!
   
• Poor organization skills. - Well I'm not pretty bad at organizing things.
   
• Procrastination. - errrrr.....sometimes when I'm too lazy.
   
• Low frustration tolerance. - arrgghhh... I never thought its going to be this hard.
   
• Chronic boredom. - Not guilty!
   
• Difficulty concentrating when reading. - Not guilty! I'm a wide reader and I read most of the time. I can finish a paperback novel in less than 2 hours.
   
• Mood swings. - c'mon! who doesn't have mood swings?
   
• Depression - Not guilty!
   
• Relationship problems. - uhmmm...next item please..

So what do you think, guilty as charged? Of course not! I maybe pathetic, loser, crazy sometimes but I'm not suffering from any developmental disorder. Hey me, why so defensive? Haha!

In the end I found the answer to my mysterious-coffee-after-effect syndrome.

" Caffeine stimulates the adrenal glands to release adrenalin, the ‘flight or fight’ hormone that prepares the body to react to a threat. It increases your heart and breathing rates, dilates the pupils and increases blood flow to the muscles. Ideally this adrenalin release happens very occasionally during times of great physical stress. However, when we consume excessive amounts of caffeine we promote a sustained adrenalin response, which exhausts the adrenal glands. As a result, these glands are unable to produce even the small amounts of adrenalin required to help us maintain focus and concentration, which in turn creates feelings of physical fatigue and malaise. "
 
Now I won't be confounded when I get sleepy after a cup of coffee. Come to think of it, I found a new solution to my insomnia.

fed up with CEBU PACIFIC!!!!

I've had enough!

So they think it's fine for their paying customer to call over and over and over to their goddamn hotline and wait for 3-5 minutes before an operator picks it and attends to your concern?

So they think it's perfectly fine that after calling for the fifth time, the answer I'm gonna get from them is to call back after 24 hours?

So they honestly believe that I'm enjoying every single minute of my precious time on the phone reciting about my concern for the nth time until they finally get the message across that all I want is to get my FREE FLIGHT ticket for crying out loud!!!

I sounded cheapskate, didn't I?

Before you mull on the impression that I'm indeed a cheapskate - HEAR ME OUT!

Last March 31, the flight back to my hometown was cancelled due to bad weather. If you happened to read my blog, My first taste of flight inconvenience you already know how messy that day was for me, and I refuse to recall the summary of events on that day simply because I just don't want to remember it. Period.

Okay. Let's cut to the chase. As a way of making up for the disrupted flight, the airline gave freebie to the annoyed passengers. In this case, the freebie is a FREE FLIGHT to any local destination, valid for 6 months. Yay!!! Isn't it such a great idea? I have an upcoming trip this June and I might as well make use of it.

So last week I called the number on the card eager to claim my free flight. The operator asked for the travel voucher number. Hell, what is that? That personnel in the airport only gave me a card which resembles a calling card with their hotline number on it and an instruction at the back on how to redeem the free flight. There was no writing of any number of sorts that would look like a travel voucher or whatever.

Then she said "Ah, they must have given you the old tavel voucher. I'll just check our record for the number." So we're settled then.

After two minutes......

Apparently, Cebu airport hasn't updated their system. Meaning - they haven't allocated a travel voucher yet for those flight cancelled on March 31st. Meaning - I won't be able to redeem that effing free flight yet, though the guidelines clearly said it is redeemable 24 hours after flight disruption. 24 hours had definitely passed. It's been almost 2 weeks my friend. What the heck!

I made another call after an hour (coz she said so) hoping their system has been updated. And probably by then she can see my name on the list telling her I am entitled to that damn freaking free flight. Well, looks like I'm into some wild goose chasing. Their system cannot put up with my simple demand coz until this very day, this very hour, they still ask me to call back tomorrow. Then the day after tomorrow and so on and so forth. C'mon! I mean we're not in 1960s?! We're suppose to have real-time data and information as commnication is getting better and sophisticated these days.

I really had enough!

Screw Cebu Pacific and your fuckin' free flight!!!!

How do you react when a friend tells you he/she is getting married?

"Wow! Congratulations!"
"Oh I'm happy for you."
"I'm glad you and (state fiance / fiancee's name) are finally settling down."

How do I write this blog without sounding pathetic?

When two of my best girl friends tied the knot after college I couldn't be happier. Who doesn't love weddings? The sight of someone close to you donning her white wedding dress, walking down the aisle, looking beautiful as ever, on her way to start a meaningful life, to leading a happy family is what every friend wants for her friend. I become exceptionally emotional and excited at the sound of wedding bells even more if it belongs to someone you grow up with, went to school with, who's been with you on girl night-outs on a Saturday night, someone you could share your darkest deep secrets, your shopping and parlor buddy. Imagine the whirl of emotions ramming through your heart. What makes it even more difficult is to face the fact that everything you've shared and went through will never be the same again.

I know it's normal to feel that way, to feel sad. But years ago I'd feel ridiculous about the idea of getting married at a young age. I had a promising career, on my way to becoming my dreams a reality. With career opportunites within reach, enjoying singlehood, constant dates, simply put, having the time of her life would certainly put marriage idea on the far end list. I didn't see myself staying at home, cooking for my husband, waiting up for him until he arrives from work then we'll have dinner together. I didn't see myself conceiving, giving birth and raising my kids.I hated the thought that I could no longer decide on my own, go wherever I want, do whatever pleases me. I hated the word COMPROMISE.

I was also in an "unhealthy" relationship back then, coupled with financial obligation to my family, made me stood my ground that marriage are for those who have nothing else to do with their life. Uh-oh! Married people are gonna hate me for saying that. But that was a long time ago when my brain used to think like a twisted rod. I mean there was so much going on with my life that I could not stop for a moment and think about finding the right one and settle down.

Before I knew it, everyone's walking down the aisle like it was some kind of fad I know nothing of. Everybody were so into it until it finally hit me that one by one, one after another, those people I knew and grow up with, my classmates, playmates, colleagues had already pledged "I DOs".

Two years ago my bestfriend texted me she's getting married and all I did was cry. That was the first time I cried over a wedding news. I felt so alone. It seemed everyone is leaving me behind. As if I was doomed to remain single and alone forever. I dreaded that thought. I dreaded that possiblity. I dreaded that looming fact like death itself.

That's when I knew I was being hypocrite all along. That I took high regard of myself. That I was pretentious. That I was conceited and egoistic. It had to take all of my relationships to falter and my friends to get marry before I'd realize that.

As if the realization that struck me wasn't fair enough, the conjuring universe is up for yet another trick. Another close friend of mine texted this morning that she's getting hitch next year. I carefully digged for the right word to say and I was like " Really?! Good for you. I'm glad you found the one." But deep inside I'm praying and hoping that one day, I'll find the right one too. For when that time comes, when it's my turn to break the news, that's when I can finally say I'm complete. That's when everything I worked hard for will see its purpose. That's when everything I went through life will find it's meaning. That's when I can say I wasn't born to be alone.