Sibling Stuff

My brother in Texas sent an e-mail last week to kick start a discussion (again) on what to do with the Makati and Manila apartments. In one of my replies, I mentioned that our dad has been sick for almost a month.

That ofcourse resulted in my older brother calling from California last night and arranging for dad's check up at Asian Hospital. His wife was concerned that massaging dad's affected leg was the wrong thing to do... pointing out that as Chief nurse in a hospital she has seen cases where it worsened things. I decided to not point out that our younger brother probably knows what he was advising mom to do since he is a doctor.

Then Sal called this morning to, of all things, demand that I give her regular e-mail updates and scold me for putting internet links in my e-mails instead of just typing the update or attaching the pictures. It escapes her that if I put everything in an e-mail, it would probably be a very long letter since I update my blogs an average of twice a month ... AND Yahoo has a limit on attachments so if I have to attach all the pictures, that would mean many e-mails.

I really wanted to hang up on her and slam the phone because (1) she calls me up in the office first hour in the morning to scold me - which would definitely ruin the rest of the day which by the way has only started; (2) she expects me to be able to answer medical questions about our father which would be better answered by our brother the doctor; (3) she insists on having sent an e-mail I haven't received; (4) she wants me to always update her when she herself is slack on updating anyone about what's going on in her life; (5) she brushes aside what I thought would be good news that her and her mom's diploma survived the fire and insists asking if her photos are safe - the one question I couldn't answer since we didn't see any photo albums in the ruin and I haven't really checked on the photo albums I brought with me to Laguna from Manila years ago; and (6) she insinuated my mom, younger brother and I weren't doing enough since we haven't brought dad to the hospital yet... and she was still emotional about that even after I told her that our brother would know when hospitalization is required since he is a doctor.

Since I know she was just being her emotional self, I refrained from hanging up.

I was still in a bad mood till dinner. Thanks to her.

Now, wouldn't it be funny if Sal saw this ranting post on my blog when she says she hates clicking the links I gave her?

Back at Coral St.

My brother and I were back in Coral St. today to continue boxing stuff. Neighbors said some people went over the wall and got in the house, leaving with plastic bags.

Upon inspection, we saw the intruders used a screw driver to take off the lock hinges. What we were sure were missing? The faucets and shower heads. We were sure that whoever stole them sold them to junk shops.

Thought we would finish with packing but when Jon started handing me the stuff from Sal's room, we realized we wouldn't finish since it took me half the day to properly pack all those silly figurines. When Sal and I were still sharing that apartment, I had voiced out my dislike for too many figurines - I consider them high maintenance. She would answer me that she would be the one cleaning them, not me. Well, she left for California years ago and now I'm stuck packing them into a box. What drove me nuts today were those little figurines ... like a family of 3 individual turtles or dogs of increasing sizes that all fit your palm type of figurines. Can't wrap a set together coz they might actually break from friction, so I have to wrap them ONE by ONE. We saw a bag that was filled with too many ceramic ducks to count ... which I presume belong to my other sister since I haven't seen them before. I guess Tess loves ducks as much as Jimmy Neutron's dad. If you see any duck looking thing in the house, you're 99% sure Tess bought it. It was crazy to keep pulling out duck after duck from that bag AND having to wrap them all.

An IT meeting

Shayne texted me last night to tell me Alex of IT called requesting for a meeting for today at 10AM. I thought it was related to the number of changes I wanted for the Treasury pages on our website. Turns out the discussion was about distributing the Treasury rates to the overseas offices and for the most part I was just there to listen and give inputs when asked. One good thing came out of that discussion though, Alex told me to go through with the Request for Service Form on auto-linking the treasury rates from the intranet site to the website. Oh, yeah! Finally! I've been nagging him about that one for months.

Buying a hospital bed

Since my dad has been sick for half a month, I decided it's time to buy him a hospital bed, which is what he's always wanted. Jon said it costs around PHP8,000 in Bambang so we decided that we use the total of PHP4,000 birthday money Sal gave to the two of us while I provide for the remaining half of the cost.

By jingfrey73, shot with SONY ERICSSON P1i at 2008-05-11

By jingfrey73, shot with SONY ERICSSON P1i at 2008-05-11

Those two were nice but were above PHP 10,000 which I didn't have at the time. What we bought is the one made in the Philippines. It cost around PHP8,600 including delivery ... since it was same-day delivery, Jon and I rode in the van along with the bed and saved bus fare home.

Papa wanted to use the bed at once but Jon was firm on setting it up tomorrow morning.

Photoshoot in the Dealing Room

Jessica from Marketing Services brought a photographer to the Dealing Room after lunch. Due to some miscommunication - that is, Jessica did not see the request to postpone the photoshoot - few traders were in the area (although it was 1pm, many people were still on break because local trading resumes at 2pm) and most were in casual clothes since it's a Friday. The photographer, not wanting to waste time, decided to just take a picture of Esther at the Bloomberg terminal. While this was going on, some people, like Jong and Jan, were clowning around at the sidelines, while Buddy was busy increasing his score in Bookworm Deluxe. Milette and Che arrived when the photographer was still experimenting on the lights, do they conveniently hid in the pantry so as not to be dragged into the pictorial. Ha ha ha! They came out when the photographer was already shooting Esther.

Peaches

Peaches is the smallest of Hazel's kittens. Unlike Apple and Cherry, whose eyes turned yellow as they grew older, her eyes stayed blue.

2008 PNB Bourse Game

With a lot of newbies in the dealing room, Treasury had to sponsor an in-house Seminar with Bourse Game. RMG's boss agreed to be Bourse Master. The whole seminar was held in the Executive lounge. The Bourse games were on April 16 - 17 and Tullett Prebon sent two brokers, Michelle and Carlo, to help.

Sneaked out of the dealing room April 16 to peek and took some pics. Unfortunately, since the only camera I had was the one in my phone, the pictures weren't clear. Brought my other camera April 17 and had better pictures. Below is a clip made of the still pics from both days.

Even took videos on the 17th:

Treasury sent 11 participants, the other 22 participants came from the overseas processing unit, loans unit, and risk management.

Cristy's Birthday Treat

Cristy celebrated her birthday April 7. Around that time, she also sent money from Singapore, which when converted amounted to a little over PHP3,000. Since the three brokers were sending food for Mon and Vikki's birthdays last week, which meant free lunch from Tuesday to Thursday, we decided to use Cristy's money yesterday.

Rey and I initially thought we'd buy Pizza for everybody, but after Lani had a poll, it looks like majority wanted pancit and chicken from Savory Restaurant.

When the food was delivered after lunch, took this short video for Cristy:

Happy 37th birthday Xty! Thanks for the free meal!

Day Out with Sam

Sam texted me last Friday that half her face was paralyzed. Initially, I was worried that she had a mild stroke. Grabbed hold of my brother at the clinic via phone and with Sam on another phone, we had a mini-consultation session which made him guess that Sam had Bell's Palsy. He suggested that Sam go to a hospital and have it diagnosed correctly.

Sam also had another doctor friend, Daniel, who more or less had the same diagnosis ... actually he even texted Sam what medicine and vitamin pills to buy to ease the pain.

Since Sam hates going to the hospital, I was surprised to get a call from her Saturday morning telling me that she already visited her mom's doctor who had the same diagnosis. She was told to rest for 2 weeks so she took a break from teaching summer school. She was actually calling me from the school office.

Sam postponed our lunch meeting at Southmall and asked if we could just meet at her house instead ... and since it was her mom's birthday, I asked her what I should bring to the house ... I was thinking of a cake but Sam told me to get pizza because it goes with the spaghetti she cooked.

On the way to her house, Sam called me and changed plans ... she wanted to meet me in the mall instead. Good thing I was still in the vehicle and not in a restaurant buying pizza to go.

We ended up eating lunch at Pizza Hut Southmall. My brother met us there and joined us for lunch. Since my brother and I just celebrated our birthdays, I told Sam that the day was my treat. Sam spent most of the time consulting my brother about the disease that they were only halfway through with their food while I was already finished with mine.

When they finally finished, I asked if there's an ice cream house in Southmall to which Sam answered in the negative. I suggested we go to Mall of Asia for desert ... it was nearer than Makati. I was actually in one of those "It's hot ... let's go to Tagaytay and stay overnight" moods, and when we got to Manila, Sam firmly said no to the plan... although all it would take is board a bus going there. The bus actually stopped in front of us. He he he!

At Mall of Asia, we first looked for an eyepatch for Sam to use on her affected eye, then bought tickets to the Boleyn movie. Since we had more than 30 minutes to spare, we looked for an ice cream house for the dessert but Icebergs was overflowing with people that we decided to go to another place. We passed by Tokyo Cafe, and since I haven't eaten there before, I suggested we go in. Sam and I ordered crepes with ice cream, while Jon ordered Symphony ... which is a combination of vanilla ice cream, chocolate ice cream, chocolate syrup and whipped cream.

Pics at the Tokyo Cafe.

At the cinema, the lady outside the door asked if we were going in for the "Boylen girl" movie ... I initially thought that she said "boy and girl" then I realized she mixed up some letters in Boleyn. Ha ha ha!

Read this entry for my review of that movie: http://box-o-donuts.blogspot.com/2008/04/movie-other-boleyn-girl.html

After the movie, we overheard someone bragging about her knowledge of the British royal family to what we assume was her girlfriend ... from what we heard, I think she thought the Elizabeth at the end of the movie was the current Queen Elizabeth ... which had us chuckling.

Jon and I accompanied Sam to the area where she could catch a ride home. We then walked over to the other side where we could catch our ride home but people were standing waiting a van to arrive. We decided to take a shuttle to Buendia-Taft instead where we know there are lots of buses headed for home. Since we went back in to mall on our way to the shuttle stop, we decided to might as well buy some pancit and dimsum to bring home for our parents and older sister.

Uber Taglish

Text from Bee 09:44

isnt it so srap 2
gcng in d umaga
& sLAmat
God 4
An0der arAw
dag2 2 ur bUhay?
& ur CP
2n0g&
U ngiti
c0z its
s0 aga
in d AM
dAt "Bee" aLa2 U aLreAdy.
Tc. .

That up there has everything I hate about Taglish and SMS shortcuts. Texted Bee back and told her I am assuming it was a joke, as we hated Taglish when we were in grade school/high school.

Bee 15:53

Yeah, that was so funny i had to pass it along. Wow, you check messages really late, huh?

Odds and Ends

I was purging my memory cards and saw these photos:

By jingfrey73

A bar of Masareal. PJ flew in from Cebu to attend the Business Managers convention and dropped by the office March 7 to visit before hopping onto the bus bound for Tagaytay. She brought otap, sweet dried mangoes and masareal as pasalubongs (gifts). Masareal is made of peanuts, sugar and water. It is a product of Cebu, Philippines, and one of Jeng's favorite foods.

Es and Dessa with the balloons used for the opening of the convention.

On that same day, someone was celebrating a birthday and bought some ice cream. That person is NOT in the picture below >:-)

Milette's computer:

By jingfrey73

Rey and Milette's desk face each other ... I wonder if seeing all those butts, even if they belong to stuffed toys, bother him at all.

I'm used to just seeing the brown maya in the backyard, this one was different though:

Old Friends

I am so bad at keeping in touch with friends and family ... shouldn't be spending that much time on Neopets and in front of the TV. I am lagging at looking up my email inboxes. It's what comes off having too many e-mail addys.

Checked my Friendster account. Realized Bee is back from Australia! She left a message last March 24. She's back coz she didn't like Darwin. She's broken off her engagement, too. Dunno what she plans to do next. She could go back teaching in that college her folks own. Or produce live comedy shows again.

Was walking to the bus station last April 3 when I bumped into a college friend. Emma actually saw me buy some food to go at Chow King and when she was sure it was me, which was when I was on the way out, she rushed outside and called my attention ... her cousin running after her. He he he! Exchanged phone numbers. Like me, her folks are from Batanes. We made a pact to visit Batanes together ... maybe next year... her mom just died last November and although I'm paying to go to Davao this May, I may need to cough up some cash just in case we need to check my dad into a hospital ... ergo - we both don't have that much money to spend. Funny thing, every person from Batanes knows my uncle. They can't help it, he was the manager of the only bank in the province.

Davao ... going there May 2-4. My name wasn't pulled out of the box when the office was deciding the official delegates to the ACI convention. If the venue is Boracay or Mactan, I would have passed cause I've already been there. But I haven't been to Davao yet so I'm willing to pay just to tag along ... I already regret not joining the Bohol trip of MART about 2 years ago... I was willing to pay then but Che and I couldn't book flights at short notice.

Emma just texted me to ask if I want to meet at a cafe. Told her I'm going to a car show today so maybe next time. Bee also hinted at wanting to meet me coz she's free and can meet me anytime and anywhere. Maybe I'll meet them next week ... or tomorrow ... somehow. Them and Sam. I would be such a bad friend if I didn't make an effort.