Leaving San Diego

As I write this, I am packing my things, ready to move again to another place.

I am quiet and uneasy. All I'm thinking is "I don't want to move again..."

Screw this whole setup. I have been saying goodbye so many times to friends every time I leave for a new city. I left Florida and said goodbye to one of the best friends I've known and to very good people there, and now, I have to say goodbye again to the friends I have made here in San Diego.

Why is it that whatever it is you're trying to avoid, that's what life gives to you? Goodbyes, goodbyes, and more goodbyes. I have said it so many times, I sometimes don't know who I am anymore... And no matter how many times you do it, you never get used to it.

/endwhine

Christmas Update

My roommate showed me pictures of the waitress that I talked about in the last post. How I remembered her that night and how I saw her sober today are quite different... Let's just say she's not someone that would be my type. lol. Makes me realize how booze changes your perception. Gonna be careful next time...

[Yahoo Voice]
Yahoo Voice... Love this technology. This enables me to make cheap calls back home and to friends that I haven't gotten in touch. I am using this a lot of times now. Makes my family feel even closer.

[Identiy - The Game Show]
There's a game show here in the US where one contestant will have to guess the identities of 12 strangers. They can be airline pilots, wrestlers, violinist, etc. On one episode the contestant was a Filipino from San Diego. I would say it was a very exciting episode. The URL is: http://www.nbc.com/Video/rewind/full_episodes/identity.shtml and choose the episode for December 19.

[Quote of the Day]

Girl: I think.... we should have sex.
Guy: Can you be my girlfriend?
Girl: But I don't even know you....

Christmas Post

This may very well be my Christmas post, so...

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!

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[Last Night]
My friend decided to go to Hooters last night and I decided to get drunk. He does not drink, which is good for me, as I won't need to drive (lol). Anyway, we were there, and we had some good conversation. About how lucky we were being software engineers at a time when those are in high demand. Thank god for the Internet revolution.

So, I was starting to get drunk, and this waitress was socializing with us. I guess it was the alcohol talking, but I started flirting with her (lol). Anyway, she was an attentive waitress, so we just gave her a good tip (about half of the bill!).

After that, we got back home, and I slept like a log. Now, I have this frggin' hangover...

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[Job Search]
Finally got a job. The supposedly "december lull" of job recruitment was far from it. Thanks to the hot job market, recruiters have been calling me left and right. I was hoping to get another job here in California. The weather here is simply amazing. Unfortunately, circumstances landed me to this software company farther north. My only complain regarding it is that I'll have to move interstate again.

I think I'll learn a lot from this opportunity. I'm excited at the prospect of knowing a lot more than I know now. I hear this company have Internet applications and desktop products. Heck, they even have a gaming console product. With all these different products, I hope they're not overextending themselves. Anyway, this place where they're based at, Redmond, WA, I hear it is pretty cool during summers and relatively warm in winter times.

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[Hospitalized]
I had a health scare about 10 days ago. I was rushed to the hospital emergency room. It all started when I began feeling intense pain in my lower abdomen. I later learned it was cramps. After that, the cramps went up to my chest. I felt my lungs being squeezed and I couldn't breathe. My air passage was becoming tight, and I was having a hard time talking. The pain was excrutiating and I felt I was gonna faint. Thankfully, my roommate was present at that time, and he called 911.

Paramedics rushed me to the hospital where I stayed for 4 hours at the hospital. Thankfully, the doctor said it wasn't something really serious. They referred me to a clinic and I was on my way back home.

Then a few days later, I suddenly started having the same symptoms again! WTF?! This time, we just drove to the hospital. The symptoms die down after about 15 minutes of pain by the way. So, by the time the nurses checked me, my vital signs were ok and was placed in a "low priority" queue. Other people were being called before me, and after 3 hours of waiting, I finally decided to go home instead.

More updates on this later, as I have to clear some more information on what's really going on. But so far, I haven't had any bouts of it. I thought it was related to another incident of food poisoning, but I doubt it. Suffice it to say, that it's not something serious.

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[Be Yourself]
A lot of people would advise "be yourself". And it's a great advice. Be yourself. It's just two words. But I think a lot of people fail to actually realize what this means. It's easy to understand the words, and understand the advice conceptually. They have an image of what it looks like and they feel they're doing that.

But to actually *live* this advice, it's an entirely different matter...

At least that was the case for me. I thought I knew exactly what this advice meant. It was a simple concept anyway. But when I realized a few days ago that "I wasn't being myself", and it was followed by the other realization that "It was ok to be myself", my entire body relaxed.

For me, it has something to do with being in a different culture. I have been here in America for about 4.5 years now. That's a pretty long time. In that time, I have tried to "be one of 'em" (i.e., Americans). It meant I had to re-learn a few stuff. However, I realized that I can never be completely like 'em. I will always be a Filipino.

That phrase's message, "I will always be a Filipino", reverberated through my entire body. Because it is followed by "You can stop trying to be something else." What a relief! I didn't need to be someone else. I can just be me...

Follow Up... Kinda

So yeah, after that colossal firing that happened in our company the week before, what I had feared has indeed happened. In other words, I'm back to looking for another job.

Before we get to that, I watched this show that I really liked, the Beauty and the Geek. It pairs one geek with one beauty and they try to win against other pairs. There have been two seasons of it so far and I've thoroughly enjoyed them. And I'm looking forward to the third.

Actually, I have another reason why I can't keep it out of my mind. There was one scene that I keep on remembering. When I saw it, it felt so... innocent. It was somewhat weird for me to feel for a scene, but that's how it felt.

The scene was in a contest where the beauties were asked to make a home made rocket. And one of the beauties (which I later found was Lauren Bergfeld), threw her materials in the air. I didn't know if she did it because she won the contest or from frustration, but there was something with how she did it...

It was so innocent... She looked like she was having fun... regardless of what was happening around her. It didn't seem she cared and that she was having fun in that moment. If someone would ask me what "living in the moment" looks like, that's definitely the picture I'll give. It was so innocent, unfortunately, it was also fleeting.

... Anyway, I think I'm gonna talk about my job search next time. I just wanted to get this out of my mind.

End of week

I hardly find time these days to do an update on this blog. A lot of it has got to do with the fact that I don't have Internet in my place. So if I am in the mood to write, I miss the opportunity to record it. And if I am in an Internet console, I'm usually not in the mood to write.

I have usually stayed late at work, earning the trust and confidence of my managers and superiors. It's a great feeling to learn how to do various stuff and even coordinate various efforts, like media developers, database plumbers, content managers, QA engineers and see them merge and integrate to ship a software product.

To me, the most satisfying part of what I do is knowing that I did my best on my small part of the project. And to actually see people use it and up to their satisfaction is tremendously gratifying.

But today, something happened. For some reason, I woke up late this morning. I usually wake up at a very late 8am. My 10-minute bus ride is short enough to get me to work by 9. Today, however, perhaps from the late nights I've been doing, I woke up at 9. I had to get to work quick. I managed to catch a bus at around 9:20.

When I got to my work place, I learned the sad fact that 80% of other contractors in my place were fired... Of around 25 people, I was one of 5 left. My initial reaction upon knowing it was shock. How could a company just do this? These people weren't slacking off in their jobs. They performed up to expectations and did what they're told. They couldn't possibly do anything else to prevent from being fired.

Inside of me, I became uneasy. I felt guilt, relief, shame, anger, frustration and unbelievably, pride that I was one of those who got to ask to stay. On one hand, it was a pat in the back that they let me stayed... Kind of a thumbs up. On the other hand, my friends... the people I've been interacting and bonding with for the past weeks/months, out of work.

After going through the day, with my sense of security threatened, I phoned my good friend from Florida, Manu. I told him what has happened and provided me with some ideas on what to do. I definitely would like to find another job. I can't stay here. With the work load of 25 people now gonna be shared by 5, it's tremendous pressure. And also, btw, the job isn't secure to boot, in case you forgot.

The coming week will certainly be interesting...

A book and the beach.

So, it's been a while since I've had an update. Thanks to all who took the time to greet me on my birthday.

As for what's happening around me, I finished a book "Just Like You." I was engrossed at it, I read it in two days. It's an autobiography of a woman named Toni who would later become enlightened in her quest to find her true self.

She was candid, and her writing was clear regarding the thoughts she had in different parts of her life. I could relate what happened in the early parts of her life, but the later ones--the ones where she met her teacher and she became enlightened--not as much. It felt like there was something else in what she was talking about that I have yet to experience.

Anyway, an interesting thing she said about was about her first marriage. She basically left it and asked for a divorce, because she married her husbands for the wrong reasons. According to her, during that time she wanted to find an escape from her unloving family and thought that getting married was her ticket from it.

She got out alright, but the longing to be complete was still there. This struck me in a lot of levels. It tells you a lot of things about life in general. (1) You cannot force someone to be happy with you, even if you give them what they want--marriage, happy family life and such. How many times have we heard stories of people looking for something or someone else after getting married?

And (2) when someone leaves you, it's not personal. She left her husband because she was looking for something else, and it wasn't the husband's fault. That married life was just not what she wanted.

Ok, that's that. I'll probably talk about this topic in my next updates as some of the things that are brewing inside my head becomes clearer.

On to some fun stuff that happened two weekends ago...

I've had the good fortune of knowing some good people in my current work place. They're Indian nationals, but they're very friendly. Last week, 4 of us went to a beach called "Black Beach." We were joking ourselves and laughing on our way there because it's a clothing-optional beach.

When we got there though, the first thing that caught us was, in order to get to the beach itself, you have to walk down from a cliff. The make-shift walk way was steep and 3/4 of a mile long!

It was a nice view. Kind of reminds me of the view you get in Tagaytay when you look down at the body of water around Taal Lake. It's kind of like that, but imagine, there's a walk way down so you can actually go down if you like!

When we got down, we walk the length of the beach. At this time, the sun was setting, and you can actually notice it moving beyond the horizon. To me, that was so cool! You can see the sun actually moving! Of course it's not very fast, and you have to look for a minute to actually notice see it moving, but that was cool nonetheless. I know I know, of course the sun moves. It's easy to imagine it from the mind's eye, but to ACTUALLY see it, it's so cool!

One of my friends, removed his sandals and folded his jeans so he can waddle in the shore. I followed shortly. "What the heck, let me try that anyways" I said. "It's just a pair of jeans." So I went to the water with him. We were feeling each wave as it comes over. My jeans would get wet at the bottom half, and it was fun like hell!

We watched as the final sliver of the orange sun hides itself below the horizon. What's left was the orange hue of the sky near it. I've never seen the sunset in Manila Bay. But I sure damn miss it now.

After that, we decided to climb back up. It was a very tough climb. We had to stop 5 times, in our out-of-shape software-engineer (gorgeous) bodies. My heart was beating rapidly at each stop, it felt it would jump out of my chest.

After reaching the top of the cliff, I took one last look at the now dim beach below and we headed home.

Happy Birthday To Me!

Ironically, I attended someone else's birthday party yesterday. Bought along a cake and some other stuff for pulutan. The party went well, and I stayed until 11pm. I met a few people and they all turn out to be nice.

After the party, I called my parents. As they asked me to. When I made contact, they said they were in the cemetery. My family has usually gone to the cemetery at around my birthday, to avoid the crowds on Nov 1. Unfortunately it was too windy there to have a decent conversation. So I just said I'll call in a few hours. I was tired, and fell asleep shortly.

Now, I'm waiting to call back again. It will be monday morning in Manila in a short while, and I'll be able to talk to them.

Anyway, there's this thing I've been debating for the last few days--I still have no Internet connection. One thing that I miss a lot from my Florida place is the ability to play online poker. I don't know if that's necessarily bad. At least, I'm not losing any sleep. I usually get to bed earlier than usual these days.