Leftovers to Previous Post

You never ask somebody to love you when you only decide to love back at that moment that somebody starts giving it first. That’s selfishness.

You never blame your being hurt before in playing loose with the attempt of getting yourself back to loving again. Never assume you know what love is like when all you want are the plain, shallow cuddles and snuggles. It is never that hard to receive it from somebody, only when you know how to regard it as more than a physical recourse.

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Not Again

It's crazy how I sometimes surprise myself with my own outbursts of emotions.

I don't know if it's plainly brought about by my being naturally passionate about things, or I am just not much into regularly opening up, so I can call myself "The Great Suppressed".
I've always thought that I can carry myself through confusing situations alone, but there comes that point when I already call for my own panel, and just cry in front of them.

I don't want that same feeling again. Plainly because the outburst went out not for whom it should really be thrown at-- the one who caused the swollen feelings in the first place. It reversibly was shot at people who genuinely care for me-- people who have long warned about letting myself be drowned by feelings they knew too well that would not be reciprocated well.

Thank heavens for my own personal stake on these shitty feelings, I was given the slap of a lifetime.

I just have to remind myself that there seems to be a bright future that I have to work on, and that I can never drag someone into being with me in the journey, if that person doesn't really want to.

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The Pagudpud Escapade

Since I have been debarred from the working arena in February of this year to keep my fingers crossed with this out-of-the-country work experience, which by the way, is currently putting the biggest stress on my round-eyed face, it’s amazing how I am so much feeling the itch now to go to more places in the Philippines. I sometimes think if this is actually close to speculating, “Probably because you won’t be seeing your country in quite a while, and you won’t have this breeze of a time anymore when you get to serious, far-away work. So you would like to take advantage of the time remaining.”

That’s what’s good when you don’t have a job and you’re finished with school, you suddenly have all the time in the world to do what you want. What’s bad about it though is you won’t forever have enough dough to spend on everything, with all the available time that you’re boasting. Well, what I just said may be relative, because some people may still have parents who are willing to shoulder expenses while they are bumming around, or probably a big amount of savings from their previous jobs for them to squander and be merry. I neither have both.


Anyway, ! FIRST STOP!

Pagudpud, Ilocos Norte— At the northern tip-most of the country. Like, if you draw the Philippine map and start from the top, then move your pencil counter-clockwise to form that long, close-to-oval-shape of the Luzon area, Pagudpud would form itself right at the stroke of it.

Things I won’t forget:

1.) Distance from the capital city. Oh, the 12-hour bus ride. On a tight budget with two of my friends, we sure couldn’t afford the more expensive one-hour plane flight to Laoag, so off we enjoyed the bumpy, edge-of-the-bus seats. One-way bus fare (500-550 php) is just a quarter of what we would’ve paid on a one-way plane trip to Laoag, taking note that the plane ride won’t even get us straight to Pagudpud. But of course, choice of a bus can be a lament to one’s lovely ass.

2.) The serene environment. If you have been so much used to the raving night life of beach hotspots like Boracay and Puerto Galera, you might actually scare yourself during your stay at Pagudpud. Night crawls in quite early in the place, and there practically are no people who stay late in the streets as early as eight in the evening. Perfect for a good night sleep, I suppose. And maybe, for sharing of some horror stories? Haha. Corny.

3.) Smashing waves. Especially at the place they call the Blue Lagoon, which if I may just describe as ‘oh-so-heavenly’, the waters could practically punch your senses off. I had a taste of it, so I just ended up sitting on the sand and looking at the crystal blue waters from a few feet away. How else could I appreciate it more? The waves are ALWAYS strong, if not high, I tell you. Oh, with a surfboard maybe =p.

4.) Friendly people. They help you out, and they make you feel comfortable. From the resort owners to the tricycle drivers, they sure know how to mix good business and camaraderie together.

All in all, the place is all-worth it. It definitely is a place I would like to go back to if I want to spend it privately with someone special, or if I feel like doing some deep thinking. It sure is a serious diversion from the honking horns and blinding lights of the city.

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The Newspaper Job Post

It all started with this newspaper ad by a foreign investment bank.

With how today’s technology is fast eradicating seemingly ancient ways of doing things, it surprises me how luck can be sought, still, in its most conventional methods.

Like my weekly purchase of Manila Bulletin, an ad-bombarded broadsheet, which I usually do on a Sunday after I attend the mass to look for a job.

The choice for the broadsheet and the habit itself of buying one must’ve been gotten from my father whenever he’s on vacation in the Philippines from his ‘forever’ work outside the country. Being the good provider and loving father that he is, he would of course want the best for his family, and for himself as well— and so goes his hope to grab on a job that would keep him with us, if possible.


Anyway, I was currently zombie-ing at my night-shift work at a BPO company as an information verifier and database encoder-- and was really at the brink of calling it quits when I thought of taking my chance at this job ad that I saw. I’d just pass my resume anyway-- not so much harm in it, even if they don’t really give me a call after. The ad was already grand and ambitious for a mediocre and inexperienced lady like me, and so I thought.

Well, job-ad speaking, the only qualification that I don’t have is the overseas experience. I know I have always enjoyed the outdoors, and have always dreamed of international travel, which could maybe explain why I didn’t have qualms with a lot of field work in my two short previous employments. But I haven’t really exercised such dream as of that time. I have just been around the country.

I passed at around May last year, and I didn’t hear from them until it was August, when so much has happened with my goal of looking for a new job out of the night shift schedule: In July, I have submitted my resignation letter effective a month after, having secured a job from a local company in the normal shift last June.

Ok, so I was interviewed by this newspaper-aided bank a few weeks before my actual work transition, and even had to go through a written exam after (found it weird really that the exam came after the interview). Then I learned about the good news that I actually got the slot on the first day of my new job. How cool is that? Realizing the strenuous process of securing oneself of a working visa, I went underground with the task of furnishing the needed requirements while keeping my focus on the new and current job that I accepted. It was not easy-- or should I say, it was hard to keep myself sane. The work entailed field assignments and research and technical writing. Well, I mostly just did assistance to the officer I was under, but the stress of adjusting with the current, and planning for the unsure future is great trouble to the mind, I tell you.

It has been safe at first with the help of the internet to send documents via e-mail for the employer to process our application, until news came to me that I need to undergo another interview with a particular office in Korea, the Financial Supervisory Services, and that I have to personally go to Seoul for it.

Dates for the three-day required trip was then set in January of this year, and you could have guessed the decision that I had to stand on, which, up to this moment that I'm writing this, is keeping me afloat: filing for resignation after just four months of tenure with the newly accepted job, to put a stake on something unsure and risky.

Fine. You might question the need to give up the present work, and put myself in a limbo for something that may even encounter problems. Why not stay with the current job and just resign when everything's been ironed out?

First-- I cannot find anything to cover for my three-day absence at work. As a probee under strict observation and with no available paid leaves, I know I cannot present any medical certificate to justify the absence, per the company's handbook. I wouldn't want to go through the trouble of faking one anyway.

Second-- At the start of this year, a new work setup was given to our little research group that accounted each of us with our own projects to handle. Prior to this, I was just assisting various outstanding projects, and was therefore practised to multi-task and do the 'great-focus' challenge with the number of projects that we were getting at that time. Having to handle my own project, and to directly report to the president of the company (yes, surpassing the officer)-- that would require from me dedication, noting that a feasibility project would normally take three months to accomplish. Not to mention more time spent with the research group and the company, to survive the painstaking hurdles of becoming an experienced business planning dudette.

Third-- some personal and typical office issues that my weebly character could not stand, to think I was simply an onlooker.

What aggravated this whole story, and has practically kept me waiting until now was this another news that I and my employer got from the Labor Ministry of Korea, just a day after I talked to my boss sometime in December about leaving the company. The risk just got bigger when the Korean government set a new rule, requiring foreign workers in Korea to have at least five years of working experience for bachelor degree-holders, and at least two years of working experience for MBA-degree holders. That makes me a non-qualifier for either.

Given all the luck that I could still catch and the time that I could still fathom, I wait and hope for the best.

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The Primer

I have no idea how to go about this another debut of a blog from me, without trying so hard and sounding so I don’t like. Haha. Well I have been blogging since 2003, and have always wished to maintain what I have perseveringly started. Thing is, there exist other earthly things that I have to realistically deal with, and I simply cannot keep up with this other side of the world. That’s why I have high regard to those who can do both— face the real life and their cyber life. The smartest of them have even been featured on TV and the newspapers, I tell you.

This is formally my third blog to date, and though I have considered to use my Blogdrive account to continue things with, I just thought that the black silhouette and the projected theme will be too heavy. So much about being too reflective. Not that I intend to babble nonsense-ry with this new blog, I would like to say that it’s more of an anticipation of a major transition in my life that I want to put a clean slate on.

Everybody will understand soon.

I am not doing this to have my fair share of the media or print spotlight (though of course I'd love to have a sincere audience), nor create a rant-and-grumble site much like those perverts around, out to haggle audience of the same kind. If you knew me better, you would know that I have always regarded this as a genuine interest and a personal therapy. Written words will always be more outspoken than my baritone voice, and with it, I continue with what I have always enjoyed doing.

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ELLA

My name is Ella and was technically born out of wedlock. My parents were married in June of 1984, and I got out eight months later. Personal medical records can testify that I was born under normal procedure in the dawn of February in 1985, and was not pre-mature. While the information could already suffice such allegation to the slight disorder of sequence in the living-the-family life, my parents had to admit such act to me anyway since I learned how to count and recite the months in order.

I am a baritone woman who recently ventured into the business of exploiting my country’s inability to provide competitive means of earning a living to its people. And in the most ironic of places, fate brought me to where this new place's original inhabitants have chosen to travel to where I come from, and reciprocally exploit such talent that my fellow countrymen have in embracing the English language and its colonial mentality. We live in a world of everyday mutual exploitations, I tell you.

I am a natural skeptic, and once suspected the world of putting me in my own ‘Truman Show’. While my childhood is highlighted by timidity and shyness, I think I have come out of my shell as the cheerful, high cheek-boned individual who have learned to appreciate what she could do well and boost herself of the esteem that she needs out of it.
I still get disillusioned once in a while, though.

To you, people, whom I have since been with, have met, and will soon meet, welcome to my personal space on the web.






Ka-Jologan at 24

•Pinaglihi ako sa santol ng nanay ko.

•Parehas kami ng birthday ng bunso kong kapatid, at 10 taon ang agwat namin.

•Unang ambisyon ko daw sa buhay sabi ng nanay ko ay simple lang: maging labandera.

•May sari-sari store kami noon na madalas naming kupitan noong maliliit pa kaming magkakapatid ng mga barya— ako para makabili ng HAW flakes sa school canteen namin noong elementary. Wala na ang tindahan naming ‘yon ngayon.

•Pinagalitan ako ng titser namin noong Kinder ako dahil nahuli akong kumakain ng toothpaste. Iningganyo lang naman ako ng kaklase kong takam na takam din sa pagdila sa sarili niyang baong toothpaste. Pia ang pangalan ng kaklase kong iyon.

•Umuwi ako isang araw na walang saplot pang-ibaba noong Prep ako dahil dumumi ako sa classroom namin ng dalawang beses sa maghapon. Binigyan ako ng shorts ng teacher sa una, aba noong naulit, e ayun, wala na.

•Nagtapos ako ng Preparatory as valedictorian na may lagnat at beke. Hindi ko nakabisado ang speech ko dahil sa hindi ko magandang pakiramdam noong ‘commencement exercises’ namin, kung saan ako pa naman din ang emcee.

•Kinukuha ko ang mga naiwang bote ng softdrinks sa lamesa ng ‘messhall’ namin tuwing recess at lunch noong elementary para ipila sa canteen at kunin ang deposito. Tamang sideline lang para magkapera.

•Grabe ang pagkahumaling ko kay Leonardo Di Caprio noong highschool dahil sa Titanic na pelikulang ‘yan. Sampung beses ko yata napanood yung pelikula-- sa sinehan at VHS.

•Nanalo na ako ng libreng sine (X-men 2) dahil sa pagsali ko sa isang radio contest.

•Hindi ako sumali sa JS Prom at Grad Ball namin noong highschool. Soiree lang ako lumandi noong sophomore.

•Naging part ako ng volleyball team ng klase naming noong junior year sa highschool para sa intramurals. Bangko naman, I mean, reserve pala. Haha.

•Bagsak ako sa breaststroke session ng swimming lessons namin noong highschool. Marunong pa rin naman ako lumangoy.

•Member ako ng Computer Club for four years sa highschool, na tinagurian naming “Interaction Club” dahil puro na lang interaction with other boy schools ang agenda namin.

•Nag-audition ako sa LSFM para sa unang batch ng Campus DJ. Nakapasa ako sa initial interview, pero bagsak sa formal voice demo. Ayun, Baranggay LS na siya ngayon.

•Naranasan ko nang magpa-MRI at CTScan sa Makati Med dahil sa cyst na tinganggal sa hita ko noong nagtatrabaho pa ako sa night shift.

•Praning ako sabi ng mga kaibigan ko.

•Pangarap kong maging isang travel show host, dahil gusto kong makapunta sa iba’t ibang lugar.

•Hindi naman ako Bikolano (kay bisaya man ko), pero dati pa ay paborito ko na talaga ang LAING. As in.

•Ewan ko ung bakit, pero mashado akong naapektuhan sa pagkamatay ni Rico Yan at ng isa kong katrabaho noon sa Binondo na isang mountain climber. Hindi ko naman crush ang yumaong artista. Yung climber...errr. Parang.

•Nakatulog ako isang beses sa loob ng steam bath nang hindi sinasadya dahil sa sobrang pagod ko sa gym. Buti na lang hindi ako nasuffocate.

•Tatak ko na ang pagiging late sa mga lakaran. Pero nagbabago naman paminsan-minsan.

•Ultimate dream ko ay maging isang pilantropo. Ang bait lang, diba ;-)

•Nakipag blind date ako dito sa South Korea. Try lang, haha.

Next year, 25 na ito. :-)

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