Past Easter...

.:HUWAT?!?:.

Didn't realize I-Blog 2 is going to be tomorrow already...

Anyone who can give me directions how to get to UP College Of Law? I'll be coming from WAVE, and I leave WAVE around 12 noon.

Sigh... had I realized that 18 was a Tuesday, I would've taken a leave of absence for today... yeesh.

.:Today's LSS:.

Rob Thomas is the man...

Lonely No More
by Rob Thomas

Now it seems to me
That you know just what to say
Words are only words
Can you show me something else
Can you swear to me that you'll always be this way
Show me how you feel
More than ever baby

Chorus:
I don't wanna be lonely no more
I don't wanna have to pay for this
I don't want to know the lover at my door
Is just another heartache on my list

I don't wanna be angry no more
You know I could never stand for this
So when you tell me that you love me know for sure
I don't want to be lonely anymore

Now its hard for me with my heart still on the mend
Open up to me like you do your girlfriends
And you sing to me and it's harmony
Girl, what you do to me is everything
Make me say anything; just to get you back again
Why can we just try

(Chorus)

What if I was good to you, what if you were good to me
What if I could hold you till I feel you move inside of me
What if it was paradise, what if we were symphonies
What if I gave all my life to find some way to stand beside you

(Chorus)

I don't wanna be lonely anymore
I don't wanna be lonely anymore
I don't wanna be lonely anymore...

.:Now I Remember Why I Didn't Want To Go Back Home Anymore...:.

... I seriously cannot stand being around these people for anything longer than twenty-four hours. Seriously.

This was a pretty long weekend, but I sure as Hades needed to put up with it, as it's definitely better than slaving over work for as long as I seem to have been doing lately. And the food is free until Sunday. That should count for something as well... heh.

Baguio's nice at this time of the year. It's definitely not as hot as it would be in Manila, and my asthma isn't acting up this time (so far), so I guess I should feel a lot better about that fact. It's just that I've been here in Baguio for so long that it does get a bit boring whenever I'm here. Ah, well. No big deal, regardless.

.:Baguio Discoveries:.

The first thing you have to realize whenever the family goes to Baguio is that my mom is cooking. Well, being the host of “Makuha ka sa Tikim”, you can be sure that she definitely knows how to cook. So she took with her some fish, beef steak, adobo, and binagoongan, and from there, we had multiple dishes that spanned Thursday to Sunday.

My mom has this incredible talent of recycling food to a point that it becomes an entirely different dish. For instance, the beef steak was seen as plain beef steak, then beef steak inside sticky rice balls, then beef with mushroom and brocolli. The adobo was never seen as plain adobo. It was served as Thai rice, salted fish with adobo rice, meat for binagoongan, and so forth. You can tell that we never got tired of the fact that only four viands were actually employed for four days with two meals each day.

This was also the first time in years that I didn't have an asthma attack while up here. That's a good sign for me, I suppose.

Funny story about Mario, though, as he was in Baguio as well, and I had him tag along for dinner with us last Saturday...

So Mario was kind of embarrassed, and the notorious manifestation of that is when he tries to chat up a storm with virtual strangers, i.e., people he's met only once, such as my entire family. So he tries to lecture my mom about cooking (I already told you how well my mom cooks. You think she needs any? =P), then he talks about his woes over food, as he tries to save a lot of money, then he goes ahead and lectures about cooking some more, involving rice fried with olive oil then topped with ketchup (Which my mom pointed out to me actually uses tomato paste, not ketchup...)...

Then while the conversation was at this pace, with his frenetic mannerisms and all...

... he tells everyone he has to go.

The man didn't even wind down the conversation before going. Jericho's (My baby brother.) jaw dropped. Lol.

So in any case, my parents didn't think Mario was gay, but they sure found it amusing how someone so embarrassed could talk up a storm that way.

And then they understood him better when I told them the story about Kathy driving Mario home and Mario's infamous attempt at small talk...

.:San Kilo Bridge:.

There's a certain eatery in Tarlac, I believe, where they challenge you to cross a very narrow bridge and get a kilo of fish cooked the way you like it. I wish I had a picture, although maybe I can find one online or something.

So in any case, this bridge is fairly long and narrow. It's wide enough for only one of your feet, and what made it difficult to cross was not that it was narrow. Heck, you could crawl your way there if that were the problem...

The problem was that in addition to the bridge being narrow, you had to step over several gigantic shells strategically placed all over the bridge. These shells were spaced apart just so narrowly so you can try to step between them. It's not that hard just yet, as I got that far when I made a pre-trial to see if I should attempt to cross.

By the way, you'd fall into their 6-9 feet deep fishpond if you ever slipped up in your attempt to cross the bridge.

When I asked the waiter about crossing, I was promptly informed of two things that made me back out of it right away...

1. You had to cross the bridge, then go back to where you started from, ergo, you cross the bridge twice.
2. You had to carry a bucket of water while headed there.

The bucket of water, me and my brother correctly guessed, would throw your balance askew. It would actually have been potentially easier to cross with two buckets, but with one, it definitely wasn't going to be easy...

Needless to say, I backed out. But next time, I will make sure to make an attempt.

.:The Tacsiyapo Wall:.

In the same floating restaurant, there was this place called the Tacsiyapo Wall, where people threw plates and other stuff at the walls to release their anger. There were loads of marks on the wall, indicating people you might want to throw at but instead take your frustrations out on the wall. The price was about 45 bucks a plate.

From “mother-in-law” to “corrupt politicans” to “ex-girlfriends”, it was pretty amusing to see people yell “Tacsiyapo!!!” then promptly toss a plate at the wall.

For those with bigger issues that plates couldn't settle, televisions are also available to chuck at the wall for 1,300 bucks each.

.:Celebrity Sighting:.

The restaurant is owned by Rod Evangelista, owner of Singing Cooks and Waiters, Atbp., among other restaurants. In any case, what is amusing about this is that we saw Jericho Rosales and Rod's niece, Heart Evangelista, over there. Hmmm... Heart actually looked hot from where I was standing, but that's because she wasn't talking yet. ;P

.:Do I Know Where I'm Going To?:.

I needed the respite from everything that's been going on in my life lately. Work, for one, has been extremely hectic for me, and I frankly feel like I'd just want to leave WAVE already the moment a remotely better option comes along for me. There's Unilever, maybe even teaching in Japan if I finally decide to just go in that direction, and there are still a ton of other options that I'm quite certain would prove more financially and possibly more professionally rewarding than what I'm doing with WAVE so far.

WAVE has made me feel, ever since I moved to the graveyard timeslot, that I'm little more than a second-class citizen. One of the main gripes Gia and I had with them was the fact that they left the both of us out of the audio-visual presentation. It was a glaring omission for them to forget about us when they brought up the tandems on their programming. A glaring omission that has happened more than once.

It's hard to give your all to a company that makes you feel very unappreciated, and I don't just mean that financially. As a tandem, Gia and I have come a long way and have quite a noticeable following despite the fact that we're in an ungodly timeslot. Regardless, what does that mean to them, huh? Apparently, because they're all asleep and have no damned idea what's going on with the show, they'll just go ahead and ignore the significant amount of people who actually enjoy the graveyard shift. How do you intend to continue feeling the least bit motivated with that kind of very tepid recognition of your efforts?

It's been close to two years, and I know for a fact that I have improved my craft significantly from when I first walked into the station. There is no question that I am a lot better now than I was when I started with WAVE. I also think that it's fairly obvious that I have exerted a lot of initiative on my part to make sure that they don't just overlook the things I can do for the company, but after all has been said and done, they still casually ignore that fact. It's getting tiresome, and the only reason I'm still with WAVE is because I don't have a more stable job to go to, and out of courtesy to my boss, who thinks I can do a good job with my latest endeavor, which still obviously doesn't pay enough...

I have griped about my work a lot in the past, but I think my patience with this company is already hitting a breaking point. Two years of waiting has definitely not been getting me anywhere, and I know that being an on-air jock doesn't really last long enough for me to sit it out and wait for things to get better. I have a lot of things I need to accomplish, and I really am beginning to understand more and more that WAVE, no matter how much I like the actual job, may not necessarily be my ticket to fulfillment.