Smoking on the Big Chair

I come from a very religious family of Catholics but the week that was wasn’t anywhere near to being holy.  It was full of new connections/reconnections, discoveries, some drinking, redemption, and more drinking…

I’m gonna start-off with today, Easter Sunday, and I just came from work. And boy, I tell you—its so d*mn  freakin’ hot outside!  The hottest, thus far.  Therefore, this is a “bit” or my homage to Conan and to MTV’s “yo’ momma,” so you would have a clearer idea of how hot today really is…it’s after lunch.

It’s so hot outside, all the eggs hidden for the Easter egghunt became hardboiled! –duh…

…It’s so hot outside, I saw our neighbor’s chicken lay a fried egg (corny)

…It’s so hot outside, I saw two trees fighting over a dog.

…It’s so hot outside, I hear trees whistling for dogs.

…It’s so hot outside, the guy on the cool Sprite commercial who jumped over the building, fell and died…his supposedly “water wings” that will take him soaring up in the air, evaporated.  Now, that’s really hot!

Ok…true story…

…It’s so hot outside, on my way home via J.P. Laurel Avenue, I saw a very long procession of devotees took a detour to McDonald’s drive-thru with the statue of jesus for Mcflurrys and iced tea.

…It’s so hot outside, all the female traffic management marshals of the procession were wearing their pantsuits without the pants!

…It’s so hot outside, that I have discovered that asphalt has a liquid state; just like I recently discovered–early last year–that, apparently, there were other astronauts who were able to land on the moon after Apollo 11!!!

(**drum roll…I hope my lola forgives me)

…It was so hot outside, that jesus, after rising from the dead,  decided to stay-inside the cave until 5pm.

BEAT THAT!!!!

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Speaking of new connections, I just got a new number and a new phone last Monday.

Some may say that I may be a dummy for spending money for this type of phone.

The brand-new phone I got has a 3-inch LCD with loud surround speakers, powerful as the Altec Lansing without the sub-woofer, along with a cool touchscreen feature.  Its not an iPhone nor the N97 but its the “ground-breaking” N86 (during its first release) from Nokia.

Pretty cool, huh?  Well….not quite.  It’s from China.  A clone.  A far cry from the original.  It has WAP but no WIFI capability.  The camera has only 2 megs from the original’s whopping 8 megs.  It’s pretty much the same as the cameras you have to rewind.

It plays and stores music, photos, and videos but the built-in demos are in Chinese–imagine that.

Oh…apparently, it also has a memory—wow…128 MB, built-in.  Far from scratching the surface of the original’s built-in 16-gig memory and another 16-gig for external. You may, however,  buy a tiny SD card to have an additional memory of 1 gig. Geez!  Why bother?  My dog Milo has more memory than that because of its huge head.

But “pit-bullying” my new phone aside (pun intended :P), the exterior is pretty cool.  It could have fooled me, really.  It’s nice and the price is just around 120 USD apart from the original, which was released at 600++ USD.

I’m not into tech gadgets with ridiculous features that I may never ever use or even discover.  The phone I got has what I need. It could store numbers, has an alarm clock, receives and sends text messages, and more significantly, makes calls, anywhere!  Photos? To me, that’s the digicams job. Wifi? Its the PC’s job.

I bought this thing coz maybe I just needed something new (OA)–or for some…a phone! hahahaha (TRUE).

I’ve heard that these type of phones (from china) may never last long and it will encounter problems at the very early stage of usage, compared to the original.  But, on the contrary, it’s how you use and take care of it, which applies to any(thing) device.  But knowing me, with the ever where-is-it-I-just-left-it-there-3-days-ago attitude, this one’s a keeper–I hope!

Chances are, I may lose it before it even crashes…just like the others. Hahahaha.  It’s simple economics.

So…who’s the dummy now?

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Balot and I did plan to go on a trip during the Holy Week for a break but then at the last minute, we (or I–she claims) have decided and AGREED to skip it and do it some other time to avoid the holy week crowd in the beaches or some other getaway paradise.

But for some reason, I think Balot got what we both hoped for–a break from work.  Last Monday afternoon, I had to rush her to the hospital from her office due to a developing fever and lower back pains.

So I checked her-in admitted her to the same medical facility where I had my vacation was confined last January.  It was on the same wing and floor but in a different room.  There, we got reconnected with the nurses who had taken care of me for 5 days.  Reconnected, meaning…uhm…they saw us again.  Nothing has changed much.  One nurse was still pregnant and I think,  one more stay, we would get the next one for free.  Yeah.

As usual, nothing much to do there but take photos, eat, sleep and go to the bathroom.

Doctors and the usual battery of tests claimed that it was nothing.  Of course, that’s what they tell you.  Buwuhahahaha…joke!  Balot’s fine now.  She only stayed there for 3 days and 2 nights.

It wasn’t the break that we were hoping for, though, because it sucked for her—I had to go to work every morning and she was alone during these times until I get off from work and hurry back to the hospital.

Hopefully, everything goes well in May (year:  unknown…hahahaha….just kidding).  Still a long summer, though.

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Well, to sum things up, last Friday was the most interesting.  I and my work buddies went to Waterworld after work.  Yes, that’s correct. On good Friday, we all went to work.  It’s no big deal.  It’s how we roll.  Well, why not render half-a-day’s work on your rest day while rounding up everyone so we could go all together?  And besides, it was a triple “pay-day”.  Again, its simple economics.

“Not just a hat rack, my friend” (tapping right temple with right index finger).

But anyway, we had fun.  Waterworld is still the same. The pool still appeared to be lucid and clean.  Filled with people and lots of kids.  Sure.  And the nearest bathroom was like on the next resort.

The water was so clear that I almost lost a black-beaded bracelet after riding one of the slides and hitting the water on impact, doing the superman.

I actually panicked because you can’t see a thing, even on the surface.

All you see is white! Totally, white! You cant even see your own feet, when you’re in the water, lookin’ down.  Eeew?  Hahaha. Who cares?  We all had something to drink.

Anyway, the life guards there didn’t have goggles.  So…I offered a reward to the group or to whoever finds it.  After 30 minutes of searching, I stepped on something and, thank god, I found it though it was getting dark.

That bracelet may just be a simple ornament that could be replicated by anyone at anytime.  But, not to me.  It was made by a special someone.

Well, my skills in simply standing around saved me some money and perhaps, a relationship!  I don’t mean to exaggerate but it may have saved me from repeating the holy week all over again , when I get back.

Starting with me experiencing the “Agony In The Garden”.

I just heard my horoscope in the morning news and it said:

“There will be no hassles today. Focus your attention at work to become successful”.

Yeah, tell me something I don’t know! Definitely, there will be no hassles today unless someone betrays old Solid Snake and gives me the wrong intel–again, or more significantly, if my router and wireless adapter decide not to talk to SmartBro’s main server and delay my Torrent downloads, which, in fact, hasn’t happened yet since I got this cool gizmo 5 months ago–except for an internet outage or when I didn’t pay the bill.  Otherwise, its goin’ to be a great day!

Well, for starters, I do not understand why a lot of users–especially, North Americans  (not a racist remark, don’t get me wrong) encounter heaps of problems with routers and network adapters. But thanks to their ineptness in technology and reliance on phone support, or simply put: their idiocy, I have a job here. Or, ‘macronomically’ speaking, we, pinoys, have jobs everywhere due to the expensive and spoiled workforce of the deteriorating U.S economy.

It may be one of two things:  We pinoy’s are just that good or we’re very cheap!  Well, if you’ll ask me, its a bit of both! No funny remark necessary but let me say that we being cheap is an understatement.

Anyway, going back to the horoscope, it also said that for me to get ahead at work and “become a success”, I need to focus. Well, that may spoil my day ‘coz it’s that time of the month…again.  I have decided to take the rest of the day off–a day earlier than my actual rest day due to muscle and joint pains. Yeah…sure. Like I workout or even exercise–oh, maybe that’s why.  Or, like my job requires physical endurance or whatever and I felt the need to recharge.

But, NO. It’s just that time in our work lives, when we all think that we need a break, plain and simple.  For reasons such as to finish a book, walk the dog and give it a bath, update MyFace page–whatever, or win lots of high-prized races to finally buy that $2M-Ferrari formula one car, or the most common reason, to nurse a huge hangover from previous night out in town.

This is the phenomenon referred to as “tapol”.  This employer’s/boss’ nightmare happens once every 6 months to a year for the average hardworking person, and for the ‘others’, once a-freakin’-week (nagtrabaho ka pa).  Luckily for my superiors, and/or for me, it just happens once a month!  My 201 will show that…just divide it by 10 years…nah…  Not to worry, though.  It’s a monkey’s job, I won’t be missed!  “A replaceable cog to the big, well-oiled machine, if you will”.

Tapol is definitely a bane to an employer’s existence.  Its known cure: NONE.  Because, every good manager knows that letting go of a bonafide employee won’t solve the problem. It’s just plainly avoiding it.  I’m not saying that this should be tolerated, either.  But then again, there’s no need for me to elaborate. No one wants a paper trail…I might end up incriminating myself (if not, others) and digging my own grave.

Hell…why not?! just a tidbit:  On the surface, one just needs to understand what makes that person with that ‘phenomenon’ ‘tick’, therefore allowing you, as a manager, to devise and create an environment for that individual to concede and change his routine, thus, getting good results in the long run.  Basically, what I’m saying is learn to adapt and think, never react.  Every person or group is unique.  Therefore, managerial styles should vary.  There you go…

Enough with the geek mode.  At any rate, this phenomenon gets the best of us but I admire some people who appear to have powers over this event.  A good example is Willie Revillame and Conan O’ Brien, along with other late night show greats.  You always see them 5 to 6 times a week on your TV screens doing their thing.

My question is: what would you feel if you keep watching reruns or a ‘guest host’ (temporarily) taking over the show because the host couldn’t make it due to…I don’t know…LBM once every 2 weeks or a very, very sore throat?  Yeah, it would suck!  But being sore for the ladies is a good thing, right?  Pardon my digression, I couldn’t help it. >:)

Well, to the untrained-eye, you may say that part of the ‘motivation’ is the ridiculously huge pay.  Yeah…give me a million a day, I’ll live in the office or perhaps camp outside every night.  But who am i kidding?  It’s not for everyone.  Just like marriage… Okay, digressing again.

However, i must say that we–all humans alike–are entitled to pursue such happiness or as the saying goes “get rich (be it anything you want) or die trying.”  Hahaha…how cruel is that?  Sad but true, baby. Yeah.  Its just what it is.  Its LIFE. It also comes with a tool-kit to screw and unscrew it that’s why its huge.  Large.  Astronomical.  Voluminous… Ok…I’m stopping.

Anyway, to attract anything you want is life to follow the “laws of attraction”.  Be positive–what a cliche’, i know.  Just go watch the documentary (na lang) and also, keep your hand and your thing in your pants, and be nice to everyone–i guess.

If you ask me…I transcend financial rewards…for real——NOT.  But then again, none of them overpaid hosts would have been given the chance and earn such privileges if they had stayed at home, writing this blog and watching Jack Bauer save the day, while downloading demos on PS3!!!

Damn ‘horrorscope‘ made me think if I should have headed up to work earlier instead, and worked my butt off!!!   Future day events based on astronomical patterns from the date that you were born??!  Nah…puhhlease!!!  You’ll be the judge.

Anywhoo…I actually woke up an hour ahead of my usual ‘waking up schedule’ and never pressed the ’snooze’ button…now that IS amazing!!!  Well…too bad.  I won’t get to be successful–today.

Today is tapol day.