A Country in Desperate Need of a Hero

Even the most hardened pessimist could not help but hope that perhaps, Jun Lozada can be that guy who can finally expose the Arroyo administration for what it really is: corrupt and self-serving. Because hell, we all know that it IS corrupt, but so far, not even coups had managed to topple it down.

I first heard of the ZTE controversy when JDV III cried foul, exchanged heated words with FG Arroyo, then promptly left the country. I am not especially fond of JDV and his clan but even then, I believed JDV III. One, he is the lesser of two evils (come on, FG has horns!) and two, he would not have had the courage to go against the administration if he weren't telling the truth. I was hoping for a showdown. A let's-say-bad-things-about-each-other-until-we're-blue-in-the-face. That would have been so much better than any soap ever produced. But then it died down.

And then Jun Lozada comes along. I cannot follow the live telecast of the Senate investigation that started last Friday so I had to content myself with checking the Inquirer every so often. Like everyone, I had to hold my breath fearing that Lozada might get cold feet and refuse to talk. After all, it happened with his friend Neri before. But Lozada did not disappoint.

As expected, Arroyo's allies are now pouncing on Lozada's credibility. Again, anyone willing to go against the president's hubby already has credibility points in my book. Strangely enough, the very things they're throwing at him and should supposedly make him unreliable are the things that make him more believable.

I believe Jun Lozada because he does not paint himself a saint. He admits to his own irregularities while he was serving as President of the Philippine Forest Corporation under DENR. He admits to giving out projects and deals that did not go through the proper biddings. He admits to advising Abalos (I've always hated that prick) to lower his commission because "bubukol ang $130M." He admits to flying to HK to evade the Senate investigation. He is every bit a person who gets tempted, follows his bosses (he was asked to "moderate their greed." Abalos' greed, of course, knows no moderation.), fears for his life but is now capable of telling the truth as it really is.

In a country where heroes are always lacking, the likes of Jun Lozada surface from time to time. For now it's enough to keep the rest of us afloat.

Pacific Strategies & Assessments

http://www.psagroup.com
Now it can be told.

I applied for and got a job at the abovementioned company. I’ll be a researcher/analyst which is basically a writer and I’ll be starting with them on the 16th of the month. My focus will be on Chinese affairs and after being on training and being comfortable with the job while based in Manila for about a year, I will have the option to be transferred to Shanghai. While in Manila, I will hold office at the Enterprise, Tower I, a stone’s throw away—if you throw it hard enough—from my present office.

To answer anticipated questions, here is the series of events that led to this seemingly sudden development in my life:

I think it was on my birthday when Evonne suddenly sent me a message asking how I was. You may remember Evonne as my grade school classmate whom I lost touch with then met up with again while I was in Shanghai. She then told me of an opening in their company. Because I was fairly happy with my present employment, I was a bit hesitant about applying. We agreed that I was to send my resume and take it from there.

Turned out that my resume was interesting enough for them to want to schedule me for a preliminary interview. Flashback: Remember that there was a birthday date, which went pretty well. Fast forward to two days after when the date and I first agreed to stop seeing each other. The depression led me to be excited about the job prospect. I then started to seriously pursue it. And because I now wanted it, I had to evaluate my chances of getting it. My issues were fluency in Mandarin and inadequate knowledge of Chinese politics, economics, etc. But I was on fighting stance. Pity anyone who dared get in my way.

First interview went well. I was pretty confident about the writing test before and while taking it, but had praning thoughts after. You see I had a lot of time left but being the confident prick that I was, I said, "ok I’m done," without rereading and revising until the end of the one-hour test. Naturally, I had to pay for that cockiness while I was on my way home. Thankfully, my article wasn’t really as bad as my praning mind tortured itself to believe.

Next step was an interview with the big boss and a phone conversation in Mandarin with a local Chinese. Vowing to charm the boss into hiring me, I psyched myself up to be Ms. Personality days before the interview. I think I was successful despite Murphy's Law coming into play: it was the first day of my period. The conversation in Mandarin was a different story. It went smoothly during the first three-quarters, but hit a roadblock when the voice on the other end said something long and complicated. I had it repeated a number of times but I still couldn’t understand most of what it was saying. Sensing annoyance from the voice after having repeated itself so many times, I just said yes in the end. I wanted to hit my head on the wall after that.

I was, however, comforted by the fact that the boss said he did not expect my Chinese to be on the same level as his staff in Shanghai and said the same to the voice before he gave me the phone. In effect he was telling the voice to go easy on me and that boosted my fighting spirit.

The hardest part was the waiting. They were still interviewing other candidates so I waited more than a week. I finally found out that I was in while in the hospital.

I already filed for my resignation and am scheduled to be here until the end of the month. You may have noticed an overlapping period. I must let you know that I will be relying mostly on my Superwoman abilities to do two or more things simultaneously. To let you in on the secret, it's actually an illusion. I do things so fast that normal people think I'm in two places, doing two things at the same time. It's really just the speed, just the speed.

(But the mosquito is faster.)

Approximately a year from now, do visit me in Shanghai. There are direct flights from Manila. No excuses this time.

My Dengue Experience

Some of you may have noticed my sudden and prolonged absence in cyberworld. Most of the time, such absences of mine are usually brought about by either laziness or simple lack of material to write about. Or both. This time, however, is a bit different: I had dengue fever.

It started out innocently enough. Muscle and joint pains that I thought was just me being plain lazy. And slight fever, which wasn't really all that unusual if you're me. I called in sick the next day, a Friday, to sleep it all off. Sleep is usually my cure-all, from dry and ugly skin to colds and fevers to headaches and heartaches. So I slept. But instead of feeling better, I kept feeling worse. I had a headache so painful I actually briefly entertained the thought that it might be brain cancer. Oh and dengue also went as a passing thought but you know, it's something that happens to other people... Not very unlike brain cancer, actually. By nighttime, my housemate Brian bought me a couple of Biogesics and like miracle, everything disappeared after about fifteen minutes of taking a tablet. Biogesic lang pala ang katapat.

Armed with more Biogesics, I even reported for work on Saturday morning. I promptly went home and slept after though and if not for the magical tablets, I would have been rendered absolutely dysfunctional. And because the fever returned every time the effect of the drug wore off, I asked Nuna to get me some antibiotics. In the meantime, I researched about dengue. I had all the symptoms: severe headache, fever, muscle and joint pains. No rashes, however. The articles did say that sometimes there are no rashes. That did it. Armed with my overnight stuff, Nuna and Binbin brought me to St Clare's Medical Center on Dian St.

I had a platelet count of 181. Low but still normal. The next day, we went back for another test. My platelet count had dropped to 129. Panic ensued. But only between Nuna and me. Everyone else was calm. We took a cab and transferred to Chinese General Hospital where the place at least was a bit familiar. Again, except for the two of us, nobody seemed to think that there was an emergency. And there I was thinking I was about to die any minute.

But I didn't. I survived four days in the hospital, with needles constantly drawing blood from me. These were days when the only news that was of any importance was how low my platelet count had dropped. I had to drink bottles and bottles of gatorade and was to stay away from dark colored food. And I finally understood something I always wondered about in the past.

I never could understand why people always complained about hospital food, until I had to eat it myself. I used to think of it as something akin to airplane food, which I kind of like but everyone else seemed to hate. But while food on the plane is a part of all the excitement brought about by travel and adventure, the food in the hospital represented my total helplessness, immobility  and weakness. On the first night that I was faced with the cold and tasteless meal, I teared up, looked at Nuna and said, "I feel so kawawa." Nuna bought me wanton mami from Chowking.

Although my platelet was not stable, it did not go lower than 129. The lowest while I was already in the hospital was 152 and that's still within the normal range which is 450-150. I was finally discharged on Thursday. I still feel weak. And I might have gotten thinner. And I tire easily. Plus I got my heart broken again, for the gazillionth time. But hey, I'm alive.

In Defense of Multiply

There have been petitions going around, calling for a Multiply boycott on the 18th of January, Friday. This is in light of Multiply's recent move to limit music-sharing among its users. One of those rants can be read here.

This blog is being written in response to Budi's message asking me what my stand is on the issue. I could not have been bothered at all simply because I did not feel the seemingly collective outrage that this move has elicited. But alas, my opinion was requested. So now let me tell you why I am not joining the boycott.

Eversince I can remember, Multiply has always had a note on its "upload music" page that goes like this, "By clicking upload, you certify that these files do not violate Multiply's Terms of Service and that you own all copyrights or have express permission from all copyright owners to upload them." Or something like that. In fact I can vaguely remember that at some point, Multiply stated a warning saying that Multiply has the right to take down music that did not pass rules on the copyright law. Or something like that. It might have been tweaked a bit over the years but we are all aware that Multiply was never lacking in informing its users that sharing copyrighted materials is bad. Therefore we are not to do it. That we have been naughty and did it anyway is not Multiply's fault. That Multiply was lax in implementing the rules had always been something we enjoyed and cheered for, and hoped would last forever.

And then Multiply is sued.

Is it now Multiply's fault that it has decided to be stricter?

"Oh, but Multiply lured us with its promise of free music! And now that they have the numbers to attract advertisers, they'll go back on their promise. We mean nothing to them!"

I'm only grateful that there was a time when we were able to access free copyrighted music when we really shouldn't. That's better than nothing, right? Besides, again, its promise of free music has always had a note attached to it that goes something like, "as long as its yours," and "as long as you have permission from the owner."

So there.

Stop whining.

For Evonne Chiu!!

If you're not Evonne, please ignore. :p

Evonne, I'm not sure how you can read this. Worst case scenario: use a magnifying glass. Hahahaha!

Birthday Blues

So today, the 8th day of the year 2008, I turn 28. Yep, that's because I was born in the year 1980. I am numerically destined to be lucky this year and I claim all the luck that the universe is willing to throw my way.

So far, the day has not started very well. I woke up with red splotches on my face, possibly a result of allergies. To what, I still have no idea. This is the second time in less than a month that this has happened. Not very amusing.

And then I got into a pseudo-fight on YM with a new friend. It was nothing serious but for some reason, possibly PMS, I felt really bad about it. Yes, bad enough to shed a few tears over it. And my face being red as it already is today makes it even more obvious that I cried.

And then came the call from Nuna telling me that my hard drive crashed. Or almost crashed. My thesis! My thesiiiiiis! Thankfully the laptop is working again and yes, they have made back up files of my thesis. Nothing can be as important as the thesis.

I'm halfway through the day. Enough time to make my birthday the lucky day that it should be. Oh, if you want to help, gifts always brighten up my day. Yeah, even when it's not my birthday. No? Ok.

Oh, I do have a birthday date to look forward to. A friend has generously volunteered to take me out to dinner and maybe coffee afterwards. We'll see how that will turn out.

Thin and Thankful

I'm back to a hundred pounds. I weighed myself this morning before going to work because I thought I was gaining weight from all the holiday festivities. In short, I felt fat. I expected to be at 110, or 105 at least but no, I was a hairline away from the 100-pound mark. So that actually makes me 99.99999 pounds.

I am admittedly underweight, not exactly by choice but I'm not complaining either. My height is somewhere between 5'3" to 5'4", depending on how straight I stand.

My weight has always been a constant source of speculation among people that I've come across with. For instance, a college classmate once asked if I was anorexic. I thought she was joking. It turned out she used to be one and I was amused to meet the first ever anorexic person in my life. You see, eating disorders were just things that I read about. I couldn't help but be amused. Acquaintances have assumed that I do vigorous workouts or that I enjoy sports at least. They ask me for tips on losing weight. They do not understand that there was never much weight to lose to begin with. Still others just stare at me, then my plate, speechless at the huge mountain of rice for my lunch.

Know that I tried gaining weight at various stages in my growing up years. I was a stick, shapelessly straight from head to toe. Okay, there was a slight bulge in the tummy area. Not a pretty sight but I've since learned to hide it but that's a different story. I wanted to be voluptuous. Curvy. Full-figured. Believe it or not, I wanted to add more meat to my thighs and arms. When I was younger, I would look at my thighs pressed to the chair that I was sitting on and think they should look like that, ideally. Years later, friends would tell me how much they envy my skinny legs and arms so I had learned to think that they were alright after all. I would get complimented on for no other reason than because I was thin.

So I guess I'm lucky. Lucky to not have to starve myself to be thin. Lucky to never have to compute how many calories a slice of chocolate cake has. Lucky to have been born in this century when thinness almost equals attractiveness or even health. Yeah, I'm lucky to be thin. Sometimes I forget.