About my Blog

Stories of a thirty something girl. She travels.She reads.She writes.She dreams.She prays.She lives.

Oct 31, 2007

fun, tiring and fulfilling weekend

i woke up really early last Saturday even earlier than my usual working day. i needed to be at GK Selecta Village before 5:30 AM as i still needed to distribute SAGIP children's t-shirts and ids. this year , we just brought 20 kids with us. although, it was a little hurtful that we couldn't bring them all, i think it was still the most logical & practical decision since we have limited budget and only few SFCs came to the event.

we rested for a while when we reached mall of asia. we dropped off our things in the farm and took our breakfast.out of curiosity, i ate pinoy style carbonara. the sauce made all the difference . instead of using cream, they used gata ng niyog and oh i think instead of using expensive tuna chunks, they used galunggong as toppings. it was uniquely good :) certified rapsa!


the kids on the other hand were having their own fun with the animals.

we went to paraisong pambata after we have fully explored the different GK farms. they played pinoy games & slid down the giant slide . us facis were just literally waiting for them to give up, hehehe.


oh, that side of MOA turned out to be really clean despite the fact that hyper kids crowded the place. the trick was all kids who traded- off a plastic bag full of garbage were rewarded with a gold fish by Batang Kalikasan. the kids were running here and there ,picking up garbage when this was announced, happy smiles were written on their faces when they received their rewards.

in the afternoon, i wasn't able to join the parade because i became really sick . jm just brought me home. it was really a long day but 'twas really fun. i am so proud of this set of SAGIP kids that we brought, they didn't give us headache. we all just had fun.





despite being sick and tired, i still helped for the preparations of our chapter's halloween party the next day. we just prepared cocktails and non-alcoholic drinks. it urned to be really successful. we had quite a good number of attendees and our participants in our on-going CLP also joined us and they're even in costumes. to have a glimpse of this fun party click here .

Oct 24, 2007

3 years and movin'

it's been three years and no matter how difficult it is to include blogging in my schedule, somehow i still manage to write every once in a while. i'm no celebrity so this blog anniversary won't have contest of any sorts hehehe...really, sometimes i wonder if there are people who even bother to read my entries. i remember during the first few years of my blogging years i was really fearless ...writing as if no one will ever read it anyway so i was openly telling how i was feeling, what i was really thinking without rationalizing. ironically, i named this blog an open space and yet i am not really disclosing much as compared before.well, a corporate slave has nothing much to tell anyway and although i want to tell so much of my weekend activities and adventures, i rather not go online because i wanna catch up on sleep, rest, spend time for dvd marathon that is when i'm not occupied with sfc activities.

right now, i feel exhausted...that's why i'm blogging. i wanna breathe, really breathe.maybe i'm just tired.i do dread for the day that i'll feel forever stuck.lately, i've been feeling that the world around me has been movin' and changing... i, on the other hand is not moving along. i always say i'm busy, people see me as one too but there's nothing...really no giant steps, no major changes...but hey, should there be one, can i really embrace it..a new life? a new self? i don't really know but i am hell curious. i was traumatized by major changes in life i think because the last time i had one, i was crying until tears literally ran out. i wish for a feel-good change now. i think i have learned enough lessons in life that i can bring as i move along with the ever-changing world.just let me move.

hey, i feel like going back to my old bloggin' style hehehe...so this is like going back 2002.so, to anopenspace here's to more stories, opinions & feelings to share. Cheers!


well, that's really coffee, i'm not drinking alcohol anymore to get drunk or start so as not to stop. it's one of the cool errr hot (:"*^%*?) changes in my life and with that, this blog doesn't anymore look like very 2002.hehehe.

Oct 18, 2007

English Experts

i used to work in an american-franchised bakery during my early corporate years. being part of the marketing team, i used to ask our american parent company to ship some of their extra marketing collaterals to help us save printing cost. having just very few outlets then, a lot will just be put into waste if we print locally.one time they sent us to display a sticker to be placed on our hotplate...i couldn't perfectly remember the exact message but i think the message goes like"30 MINUTES FRESH OF THE OVEN GOODNESS". hey, i wasn't the marketing officer then so when my boss said it's okay (although i didn't strongly believed so), i asked all bakery managers to display the sticker anyway...so there, we were flooded by English-expert Filipinos with "Shouldn't it be 30 MINUTES FRESH OFF-THE OVEN GOODNESS" corrections. i knew it. okay, so sometimes American English sucks.

now i am working in a multinational company whose parent company is based in UK. it's one of my duties to review soft copy of magazines for regional publication but for local printing. normally, i just correct some errors in pricing, catalogue page numbers, company's contact details etc...but just this afternoon while i was going through my usual review...printed in bold as an article introduction.... a very grammatically incorrect statement... " Company ARE one of the principle channel partners for the most respected names in Test & Measurement. Company HAVE trained sales engineers and a technical helpline to......." so there, when i replied to our South Asia Marketing Executive in Singapore, i said it should be IS instead of ARE and HAS instead of HAVE. i mean, it's quite a simple subject-verb agreement. to my surprise, we even needed to have an exchange of e-mail:

HER:"Hi Jeng, for Page 10, I have pointed out to UK before but they claim the English is correct. So I shall stay put as it is."
ME:yeah, if it they say it's correct English, who are we to argue...they're English...hehehe but see, Asian market just doesn't accept that.personally, i don't wanna print, distribute and explain to everyone that it's correct English in UK.so, no way we can change? it's a simple subject-verb agreement.
HER:Haha… I agree with what you say. Let me check with a few more people. In case we are the one wrong and arguing will make it very ugly.Will let u know. ^,^

i thought it's going to be okay already but then again, we even had an exchange of messages in our office communicator...the communication went like this:

her: gosh... i got different feedback from different people
her:Is there any english expert in PH tat we can consult?
me: hey, don't we just use "have" for singular pronoun "I", other than that we use it for plural.If it is just one company then we use "has"
her:hee, i manage to get someone to give opinion.she is the asia marketing mgr.her english powerful... haha
me:hopefully she sides with us i did ask around. ..hmmm, we all think it's really not correct
her:ya same i am talking to her now.yeah, she said "is" hehehe, we won!
me:three stars!

obviously, i was just being polite. i know for a fact that it's very elementary really :) i didn't expect that it'll be a big deal.

in conclusion, sometimes American English sucks & sometimes British English also sucks...and the world needs ENGLISH-EXPERT FILIPINOS ?!3@*($^! hehehe....