Nokia-lucky day

I was in denial state for a few weeks now that I lost my Nokia 7210. The worst part being, I didn't know where I did. I had flown from SF to Seoul to LA to Seoul when I realized my phone isn't where I thought it was. Searched all of my luggages in Korea and asked Al to look for it at their SF home. No luck.

So today, I went to Robinson's Place Ermita to get a new phone. The one I've been liking. Nokia 6300. No, I don't get envy when people get an iPhone coz I like this one. It's not as advanced as the recent phones, but it's sleek and elegant. I like that. I've been at the mall for 15minutes and I've just visited the Nokia store when out of nowhere someone says in chirpy voice, "Hi Ryyyne."

I look around and see Anne, my college classmate. We exchange greetings and she asks why I was there. I told her I was gonna buy a phone. She goes to tell me she knows where to get em cheap but original... Then I ask her why she's alone. A silly look creeps up and then I remember that she's actually a Nokia rep and the very store I just walked out of is her office. Silly me. What's ironic is that this Nokia rep is bringing me to Telecom World on the other end of the mall to get me my Nokia.

Not a bad idea though. The phone was PhP9,200 at the Nokia store and I bought it for PhP7,500. And since Anne is an expert, she inspected every bit and piece of the contents of the box to make sure they're genuine and all I did was pay. :) My gosh, she saved me time and effort.

In return, I treated her for pasta at The Old Spaghetti House. We catched up on each other and she sent me some of our other classmates' numbers. We forgot to get a micro SD for my phone so we asked a store and it's like P900 so she texts her friend again and her friend gave the 1GB micro SD for P500. :) Sweet.

Sold Out! Aw man!

Man... I'm here blogging on Al's laptop while he's behind the door I'm next to, having band practice for tomorrow's gig. I'm just so disappointed. About a week back, I've been thinking about getting a Nintendo DS lite for myself and last night I finally decided I would. So I brought my money and it was one of the first things I wanted to accomplish.

And what do you know? It's sold out. Like almost everywhere in the United States. Not even online. Man...

Oh and the flight going here, I saw a man using the exact HP laptop that I've been meaning to buy for months. I have to get it next month or else it might just be I-should've-bought-it-when-it-was-still-available part two.

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan...

Stereotyping Flight Attendants

There's this CNN report regarding a Thai TV soap opera that's "causing a stir" among flight attendants. The soap, its title translating to Battle of Angels, depicts flight attendants being in a lot of catfights, sex on layovers and stuff like it. (click to see the video clip)

The producers and other people, of course, see nothing wrong with it and they don't understand why it's causing such complaints from the FA Association in Thailand(?) and that it's actually attracting lots of viewers. My take? They will NEVER understand.

I speak for myself: I am already dealing with trying to shrug off stereotype comments of people that flight attendants have boyfriends everywhere, having sex with whoever, getting it on the Mile High Club with passengers, or sleeping with captains and first officers. For the stereotype idea to be immortalized in television, makes all the other people believe that it is indeed what happens and it is the LIFE of a flight attendant.

Struggle is a good word. You never can take it away if my boyfriend fears that I do have that life. We [flight attendants] struggle to prove our faithfulness. I'm glad that Al has been over that issue already; I'm just lucky I have someone who really trusts me. But for the other FAs, everyday, every flight and every layover is a struggle.

Yawning Jessie

Earlier today my college kada Chai went online and we chatted for a bit; she's pregnant and she's just learned the sex of the baby :) Woot, woot! It's a girl! Haha, she'll have her very own Barbie. She went for a 4D ultrasound to see her li'l girl.

The baby is yawning I think :) She's already got her name, Jessie, and Chai is thinking of another name that starts with a C for a second name. I suggested Charlize or Clarisse, what do you suggest? :)

Good Mornings

I'm back in Seoul from SF; I'm supposedly tired and sleepy after the two and a half hours delayed 12-hour flight. My SF layovers are always good, because of aL, of course. But whether or not we go visit some tourist places or not, it really doesn't matter.

One of the things I like best about SF is waking up beside aL. It's sweet how in the midst of extreme drowsiness/sleepiness one would always reach out to the other. He's on his back and I cuddle beside him, then when I turn to face the other side he does too to still be hugging me while we sleep. Care is when you wake up in the middle of the night and the first thing you do is check on whether the other is cold, if you've pulled the comforter too much leaving him/her too little. Affection is waking up to someone planting you a kiss before getting up before you do (to make breakfast, make coffee, go to the bathroom, or walk the dog).

...And writing this post just makes me miss him even more. Alright, run down of what we did.


January 15th - Arrival Day
I arrived on time and got to the hotel by noon. aL's still at work so Mama picked me up, we had buffet lunch at Moonstar then went to Target to get Sid some food and I bought gummi bears/worms for kuya and a few more things. We got home around 4 and I started 'inventing' a dinner recipe at 6-ish. aL got home soon after so we had dinner. Our night just won't be complete without having coffee so we went to Starbucks and rented Good Luck Chuck from the video store. Went home and watched the movie (my type of movie! haha) then went to sleep.

January 16th
Woke up and I prepared breakfast--yey I made him have something else other than coffee and yosi for breakfast! Then Mama went to work, we Xbox 360-ed til I fell asleep on the couch and four hours after he's still playing! Mama got home and we went to Twin Peaks, prolly the highest point in SF where you can see the whole of SF.

View from Twin Peaks--the whole of San Francisco.

Okay don't get carried away. That isn't aL and I. We climbed up the hill to watch the sunset and apparently another couple had the same idea. They were just so sweet. Literally just watching the sunset together. Aww...

Watched the lovely sunset. Then went to Westlake to have dinner at Banana Island, where we saw the politician Magsaysay (don't ask me who I wouldn't know, I don't dig politics). Window shopped at DSW Shoes, then Walgreens to buy some more sweets to bring home. When we got home he wanted to watch Boogeyman 2 but I don't like those kind of movies so I distracted myself with PSP and prepared him his dessert of cheesecake, then eventually I got drowsy with the colds medicine I took so I fell asleep on the couch while he was watching the movie.

January 17th - Departure Day
Alarm rang 6am, but it was 8am when we got up. Rush, rush to make it on time for my 10am showup at the hotel. 9:30 I got to my hotel room and I found out our flight's delayed so showup's at 12:30. We were able to have breakfast at the diner across the street. He left at about 11:15 =(

Summer Classes = Wedding?!

My younger bro, Miko, whose college fees I'm paying for, had voiced out his interest on taking summer classes this coming summer. Personally, I won't recommend taking summer classes (although I never tried) coz I think it's like there's no balance between work and play, summertime in Manila is also terribly hot and humid so it's a very uncooperative weather to be taking public transpo, and besides, squeezing what you could learn for a semester into two months is a bit too much, don't you think? And prolly tuition fees are greater. (No that's not what keeps me from making my bro go for summer classes... Seriously!)

Tatay actually think it's a good idea so I ask my brother more about it. Why is he taking summer classes, why can't he just wait for the subjects to be offered and take it the semester it's available, so on and so forth. Well it turned out that it's because of it being a pre-requisite to further subjects, blahblahblah...

Then Miko says he'd graduate by 2012 if he doesn't take em this summer, and 2010 if he does. Woah! Two years?! I don't think I'd still be flying til 2012, no way! So I finally decided to let him; but he's changed his mind thinking he's depriving himself of vacation days (oh why did he come to his senses!)

But still, Tatay's eager to have him finish asap so I had to half-jokingly tell him to take the classes so that he'd finish early...so I could [prepare to] get married! Eek! (Imagine having to say that to your bro?)

Passenger Stories II

Tomorrow is actually a day off. Hmm so maybe I'll just go to church tomorrow.

I've decided to use "Passenger Stories" as titles to post concerning weird requests or encounters with passengers. And yes, it's time for yet another.

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MNL-ICN flight, January 12.

Plane arrived at NAIA twenty minutes past scheduled departure FROM Manila (to Seoul). Flight time: 3h 4m. There's this what we call "airshow" on board that animatedly shows where the plane is already (during the flight) and which direction it's taking. This is not pre-programmed, rather, it's actual. 20 minutes before scheduled landing at Seoul, we begin to prepare everyone for landing. Even the entertainment has been switched off and only airshow is shown.

One Korean man undeniably shouts "excuse me!" to me while I was making my rounds. For one, I hate them when they shout. Second, I'm tired. Manila flight is always soo difficult. So I stop to attend to what he needs by raising my eyebrows. He points at something on his screen (which of course shows the airshow) and speaks in Korean. I give him a poker face. So he switches to his broken English.

"Incheon (Seoul's airport), here!" [motions towards the left] "Biheng-gi (plane), here!" [motions towards the right] His tone is irritating, it's not even a 'why' tone. I shrug and say, "I'm not the captain, but maybe we're circling." I hardly try speaking in Korean nor simple English words they could understand if I don't even want to explain in the first place.

"Right! Left!" He continues. By now several passengers are already looking at him (and at me). Still poker-faced I say, "Traffic might be heavy so we circle." The impatient passenger continues blabbing/shouting: "Call captain! Say, why this way?! Call!"

I have a lot more things to do than talk to this jerk so I say in all my poise and in a low but condescending tone (through his blabbing), "Sir? Sir. Are you listening to what I'm saying?" He continues to blab so I raise my volume a bit so that the other passengers would hear me as well. "Excuse me, sir. Listen to me. (Knowing other people hear me, he stops and looks up.) There might be heavy traffic at Incheon so we have to go around for quite a while. You understand?" Judging his expression, of course he didn't.

Anyhow, I added, "But if you want to get to Incheon now, I could interphone the captain to give me the permission to open a door and drop you off from here (at 15,000 feet)." With a sarcastic smile I leave him with a few people smirking at him.

And after a few minutes the captain announces we might be circling for about 40 minutes because the domino-effect on the delays (due to heavy snow) got us and 21 more planes before us stuck circling til we get to land one after the other.

Nonsense

I got back in Seoul about three hours delayed because of heavy snow causing the congestion at airports. I walked in at the hotel around 9-ish and was really hella tired that the front desk agent filled out my form and just asked me to sign it. I checked on Creworld for my next day's schedule and oh boy wasn't I the luckiest? I got Taipei early morning. Which meant I needed to sleep asap and wake up in less than 6hours to fly it.

If not for the light load on today's Taipei, I would call in sick. My tomorrow's Manila quickturn got changed to standby, which is good but in some ways it isn't. I was rooting for dayoff-MNL-dayoff-SFO which turned to TPE-stby-dayoff-SFO. And if tomorrow's gonna be turned to a dayoff (coz I'm one hour away from maximum flight time per month of 95 hours, so it's gonna be difficult to get me a 30-minute quickturn flight), it won't really make much sense coz two days of in preparation for a SFO flight where I'm an add (non-working) crew? Nonsense.

Blog Friends

After two something years of being friends in the cyberworld, I finally got to meet Tin and Abet (with Brian) in the flesh. It was triggered with Abet's coming home after being in the States for six months. We ate at Gerry's Grill in Glorietta. Abet even had a gift for me: a pair of bedroom slippers and socks; and I finally got to see the Holga cams that Tin had asked him to get for her.


Tin's really babyfaced that I look more ate-ish, and Abet looks younger with the short hair :) Next time uli! Sana makasama na ko out of town ;)

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I miss aL so much. And no, we did not break up; my previous post wasn't for him. I hate that he's so overworked--two jobs, different shifts, so much hours and lack of sleep time. Sometimes I'd wait up for him for hours til he gets home or wakes up, only for him to be able to chat with me for a few minutes. Or sometimes he's too sleepy that he's there but can't concentrate na. And it's not like I can complain, coz if it had been me, I won't even have the energy to even switch my pc on.

I wish he'd quit on one of his patients. He told me about it about a month ago that he would, come January. It's January and he hasn't still. I just worry about his health: about his lack of sleep, too much caffeine, smoking and then driving when he's too tired to drive.

Sigh. I can't wait to be back in SF.

To the one whose heart I broke

You'll never know how sorry I am for breaking your heart. It might not have shown but I felt the pain twice as you did. But I'm certain that what I did was right: for both you and me. I'm sorry you had to have your heart broken by the person you never thought could. I didn't either. I'm sorry you had to realize that the same girl just can't be the same girlfriend to every boyfriend she'd have.

Thank you for sticking by me, though you never were my first priority, I was always yours. You gave more than a hundred percent, I gave half. Thank you for the love, the effort and the lessons you've made me realize. I wouldn't have been a better person if not for you. I'm just sorry you have to learn some things the hard way. Anyhow, I'm eternally grateful.

80th and last

Yesterday was Lolo's 80th birthday. As always the caterers were called in and by nighttime, their backyard was turned into a reception area. Every year, Lolo's birthday is the first get together of the year; everyone in his family is invited--from his 11 siblings down to hundreds of grandchildren. Usually my lola would say we won't go for a big celebration, but my dad would always push the celebration through, and promised my lola he'd just do it til my Lolo's 80th.

And so, last night was the last. Probably around 200+ people were there. I was old enough to enjoy these things. When I was younger, I would only look forward to the food; but now, I actually talk and mingle with people (it's hard to know and be close to everyone, having such a large family). Some kids even performed dance/song/poem numbers for Lolo. Years back, it would always be my cousins and I performing whatever we had prepared.

This time we also rented a videoke machine so the MC would call on people to sing. By midnight, there was an Eagles-like ensemble on the [mini] stage: Tatay and three of his cousins, complete with stools and mic stands. By a little over 1am, almost all the people are gone, and it was time for me and my cousins to sing! :) We sang one by one until we took over the ensemble. There were all of us in front with the stools and microphone (and stands): Michael, Bob, me, Lennard, diko Ton, Miko and Ella.

It was so much fun singing altogether, but lola made us go home at past 4am :) Hehe.

All-New and Improved

In between waking up Al and replying to every single IM greeting, I was on YM with people back at home (who, in between preparing for New Year's Eve dinner and belting it all out on the Magic Sing that Al and I gave 'em, send quick messages every now and then). By 12mn--my timezone--they greeted me and my 'rents said some things.

Dad said:
Seriously though, I want to thank you for the year that was. We miss you. Luv You. Happpy new year and good morning!

Mom said:
Yes, we are grateful that you have always been good to your family. May you reach your goal and succeed in life. Happy 2008!

(As you know, I'm a crybaby!) So anyway, in all my conceitedness I jokingly told them I'm proud of myself too! LOL! But as they signed out to concentrate on their fireworks, it made me think: hell yea I am proud of myself.

Then: Material Girl.
Now: I realized material things don't give real happiness. Sure I do buy a lot than I used to when I was still a bum, but you tend to realize tangibles aren't everything.

Then: I wanna be rich, and shop like I don't need money.
Now: I have more than enough for myself, but then I can't really spend it all for myself. Happiness is being able to share what I have with my family, friends, and loved ones. And to those who need it.

Then: Dragging myself to church.
Now: Braving subzero weather and sleep insufficiency to be able to thank God. I feel very proud whenever I go to church; because nobody tells me or nags me to, but despite the fact that I'm tired and sleepy (and lazy), I still would.

Then: Super secretive about personal life to my family.
Now: My parents are the first to know everything, even things I whine about Al (sometimes). I used to put up a good image of my boyfriend to my parents, but now I let them see my boyfriend as he is.

There are a lot of things that happened to me, and they're all for the better me :) I thank God for making me realize a lot of things early in life (hey I'm just 21!) for me to able to live my life fruitfully and meaningfully. Grateful for my superb family, true friends and my boyfriend. I'm glad I'm past childish stages, kakitidan ng utak, and being unappreciative. Suddenly I'm thankful for all the emotional downs I experienced years back.

Woot! I love my 2007!