Post vacation disorder

Great, I had planned to write the whole time I was vacationing in the Mountain Province and was pretty pleased that I was able to jot down a lot of stuff. However, wrong format. I was using my sister's laptop because it was much lighter than my own. It's installed with Office 2007, mine's with the 2003 version. So you can pretty much guess that everything I wrote is a bunch of garbled text and symbols. Rats. Well, considering that it's pretty easy for me to simply upload it back to a 2007 version and then save it as an older one, that isn't really a problem. Laziness, however has me strapped back to the couch glaring at the idiot box. So you have this entry instead.

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I'm going back to Cebu tomorrow for a little rendezvous with some people for work. I had originally planned to at last get some time on the beach during the weekend of the trip but decided against it as I'm a little short on cash at the moment no thanks to several purchases that I have made and travel expenses for my little pocket vacations. So again, I will be leaving Cebu too early on a Saturday without even making it past the city limits.

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I've a new hangout along the SLEX. I used to hang out and do some work at the Starbucks at Caltex, the one northbound. Trouble is that it isn't open 24 hours which puts a little pressure on me to finish early, aside from the fact that there is no free Wi-Fi which kinda makes it inconvenient when I need to upload stuff. I've also tried the Shell station which is closer to the office but it's basically the same thing. Now, I hang out at the Total station which is a bit further south and further away. It's more convenient for me work-wise and also has free albeit intermittent Wi-Fi coverage. Plus the coffee's cheaper too.

Of course the downside is that I can relax more and so work also gets relaxed. I usually finish at Caltex at around 9 or 10pm, here (yes, I'm here right now) I finish just before midnight. Well, at least I'm not that stressed out which I am recently learning is a very big deal. And there are a lot less tourists who make their rest stops here so there are fewer distractions and noise.

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I've stopped eating carbs again. Yes, it's again a whole new world of chicken for me. A bit more time, I guess and you'll see me sprouting wings and feathers. For some time, I've been able to maintain my weight thanks to jogging in the wee mornings, however that has been made impossible due to work. So now I have to compensate by going back to my old diet. Cluck cluck.

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I've been thinking too much of work lately. It's kinda stressing me out. The problem is that everyone seems so nice to me at work lately that I have this sneaking suspicion that things are about to go terribly wrong. I don't want to kid myself thinking that it's all gonna work out because I know by instinct that it won't. Damn recession.

So to be able to compensate, I've been micromanaging things a bit too much. It's somewhat of a strategy considering that my department is in some sort of transition phase and I just can't afford anyone bungling things up. But by doing so, I am stunting the growth of the company, hence less new business to make up for any existing ones that just might collapse because of the financial turmoil that has affected a lot of industries.

Consider my trip to Cebu, for instance. The reason I'm going there is not because there are problems with the regional office, they've been pretty stable for the past months. My purpose for going there is to make it a lot more aggressive in gobbling up market share while the main office here in Luzon is competing to maintain its own piece of the pie. So I'm going there to talk with the staff and interview some potential additions to the sales force which will cover the region. At first I was thinking of activating our new (and at the moment idle) office in Central Luzon, but the potential of the Cebu office is far better so that's where I'm headed.

Hope it works. I'll know in a couple of months I guess.

As if churning out more than 16,500 words in the last 8 hours wasn't enough, I decided to write an entry into this blog of mine before retiring to bed. Actually, am still not sleepy thanks to about 4 mugs of coffee that I downed in the 8 hours that I have been working. So what now?

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The home improvement bug suddenly hit me this week. I think I'm turning gay all of a sudden. I disposed of all the gran matador bottles that I had been proudly displaying in the dining area (I'll miss you, guys!) and replaced them with pocket sized pictures of some of my vacation trips. I also have plans to get a new poster for the bedroom to replace the now outdated 2008 tanduay calendar on my door. For the bathroom, I plan to install a new stainless steel towel holder and a small shelf for some reading materials and decors. I figure a budget of around 1,500 bucks should cover all of that nicely. That is if I don't get the lampshade I want for the bedroom, plus some blinds for the bedroom window.

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My car went kaput a few days ago. Some electrical problem which I suspect is the result of some shabby work done by the guy who installed new headlights on my trusty metal frog (The car looks like a frog, hence I call him Kermit). So now it doesn't have any power and won't start even after a few attempts at jump-starting him. Darn friggin' timing too. Had a meeting at the office that I showed up late to.

So without any option left, I got the old Nissan back from exile at the office. Now this car had a hole in the radiator and needed replacement badly. I remembered I still had that steel filled epoxy that Jundel gave me a few years ago and temporarily covered the hole up with it just so that I could use it until I could have the radiator replaced. It worked quite well the 2 days that I had used it, but I had already scheduled it for replacement yesterday morning and did. However they weren't able to repair the stop lights but I figured what the hell, I'll schedule it for next week.

As for Kermit, he sits hibernating in the garage pending the free towing service. You see, I called up the automobile association of the philippines (AAP) from which I still had 2 free towing services to use. I had to change the registered vehicle to Kermit first and wait the required 7 day period before they could formally register Kermit on their system and avail of the free tow. So for now, I'm stuck with the Nissan. It's alright, I guess. It is pretty roadworthy and hasn't given me too much of a problem. (Except of course for that time with the refrigerator)

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Have not had a sip of alcohol this weekend. But don't keep your hopes up, the weekend's not over yet. hehehe.