Bottomed Again

It was a good 4 months of having a taste of being higher up in the food chain. It was too good to last. The newest member of our department is going to quit (for personal reasons).

It isn't even final, but the ’requests’ are already starting. "do this." "do that."; and what I hate the most - the changes in our schedule. Instead of scheduling their lives around our work, it’s my sched that will get thrown around again.

That’s the way it is in the hospital hierarchy they said. And for a time when I was not at the bottom, I was told to exert my ’seniority’ by ’delegating’ tasks. That’s not my style. I don’t ask others to do what is mine to do. If that is the way one exercises his or her seniority then I’ll never become a senior.

What's worse is that the next applicant to be accepted might be another female... WTF!!!

The Filipino Isn’t Stupid

… but it seems we still don’t know how to properly address our concerns.

On May 10, this country will be having it’s National Elections. It will also be the first ever automated elections the country will (maybe) have. During the past months, the media has reported on the PCOS machines provided by the group Smartmatic, the printing of ballots and everything else about the planned automated elections.

And yet, there have been several problems along the way, problems that an IT group like Smartmatic should have seen… problems that seem impossible to have been overlooked by the company [unless it was intentional].

The Commission on Elections [COMELEC] is the government agency in charge of the elections and yet they don’t seem to have an idea of what is going on, except what Smartmatic tells them.

Same goes for the media – for all their claims of unbiased, fair coverage, none of the major networks have provided their own independent IT expert to point out or at least explain to the people why we should or should not believe Smartmatic and/or the COMELEC.

And today, just 6 days before the elections another problem has been found – the Compact Flash cards of all the PCOS machines are not properly programmed so they all have to be replaced.

1. This should have been seen weeks ago during testing.
2. It can be seen as a way of manipulating the results
3. why does a machine with so many supposed security features have to use REMOVABLE memory cards to store its programming AND results???

And now they say that it’s to late to ask the COMELEC and Smartmatic to be responsible; and that all we can do is to be vigilant during the elections…

Good luck with that! At least during the manual counting, people cheated with brute force by bring guns and goons… and Filipinos died (in vain) trying to protect those ballots. But how are we going to try to stop electronic cheating?

The media is the only organization I know who can actually try and do something about this. And yet they’re spending their time bragging about which network provided the most ‘unbiased’ news coverage (which no one really cares about). I wish they’d actually use their brains and resources to make a difference.

I’m tired of this government. We need a change. Now.

Levels of Love

Does love come in levels? I don't mean 'kinds' of love like love of parents, love of friends, love of a sweetheart...

I'm talking about levels. Can you love this much, or just this much? Enough to leave everything behind or just as long as you agree on most things.

It is supposed to be all or nothing at all? Or is it still love when conditions apply?

Say What You Mean

from a post on one of the blogs I follow:

"...I like reading newbies - they are less presumptuous. For new bloggers, continue writing. Write what you think. Say what you need. Mean what you say. In the meantime, I will follow what I preach."

It hit home. I've known for quite a while that I don't really blog exactly what I'm thinking nor do I write exactly what I want to. There have been several times when I catch myself trying to make things vague or a bit blurred so to speak.

Blogging has become exactly like the real world.

Wish I could just let it all out without filtering my words or censoring myself.

Maybe my blog has been loosing its identity. I don't think it can live up to its name anymore. I guess in 2008 I was able to pretty much tell things about myself as is but in 2009, it wasn't the same. I haven't even been able to talk about my relationships.

But I have to consider also that blogging, just like talking is my way of letting out steam. Yeh, when I have problems, I need to talk. No advice needed, I just need to rant and rant and then I'm good :D

When things are going acceptably, that's when I have to try harder to blog and even then it's usually about light stuff and things that aren't really personal. I have to change that but first I really have to come up with things I want to blog about :D

. . .

Here I go again. I seem to be slipping back into a blank state. Can't think of anything to blog about. I guess that's not unexpected since everything is so routine (complaining again) but seriously, it's not bad but the way things are going, there's nothing I can think of that I would like to share with the world. I don't even know what to post on Facebook or Twitter.

2010 is starting off bland.

Mahogany

Kansas Bob’s post, On Life Space, & Priorities, he posted the story of an astronaut who was space-walking when his daughter was born (back on Earth). Bob commented,

“...I wonder how often the rest of us miss important life events because of work or other seemingly important things.”

When I finished my medical degree, I didn’t go into specialty training because I was burnt out from the many years of school. What I said would be just 2 years has already become 4 years and counting. I could be a specialist by now.

But...

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Broadband Wars: PLDT myDSL

The Philippines isn’t even on the chart! Maybe it’s because the major telco over here is still promoting 384KBPs DSL speeds bundled with their landlines. Maybe if I was in Japan, I wouldn’t mind loosing 1 or 2 MBPs but over here every KB/s is worth fighting for.

I’m not one to rant easily but recent discoveries really have annoyed me. 3 years ago we had our first ever broadband connection - 384KBPs courtesy of SmartBro for about $20/mo. Service was consistent but there could be up to 3 computers using the net at a given time at home so we needed more bandwidth

Towards the end of 2007, we came across PLDT’s offer of ‘up to 1MBPs’ for the same amount of $20/mo. Not to be defensive, but I made every inquiry as to if we were qualified to subscribe to them and every answer was always “YES!”. We subscribed to Xperience.

Speed was consistently (ave and max) at 600 - 650KBPs. I inquired about this several times and was told that the speed we received depended upon many factors like distance from the relay station, # of subscribers in the area, etc. etc. Anyway, the service was also consistent, aside from not ever reaching 1MBPs we had no complaints.

2008. Most telcos now offered ‘up to 1MBPs’ speeds at $20/mo but hey, that’s what we had already… or so we thought.

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Describing my Boring Day

I forgot which of those in my blog list tried making it kinda poetic in describing his day. Somehow I've realized that if I blog in English I tend to be a bit formal with my words. I'll be trying out blogging in the vernacular from time to time (with English translation of course). For the meantime here's my day so far:

Woke up to sunshine shining through my window. It was nice to feel some warmth after several weeks of cloudy skies and typhoon-filled weekends. It was my favorite kind of day: hot sunshine and a continuous cool breeze. I call it beach weather.

Had to work for half a day. Nothing much to do except catch up on my reading. As usual, after the first 2-3 pages, I was half asleep. This time I was prepared. I brought audio reviewers too so when I felt groggy enough, I put on my mp3 player and listened instead of read. When work came, I'd feel awake enough to read again... and get sleepy again so back to the audio... after a few cycles, I had a headache.

Lunch came and went and I had to go to the mall and do some errands... bank transactions actually. Weather was still great. Every seemed to be enjoying the day. No one was in a hurry, no blowing of horns, no fast paced walking.

Now that I've spent the last 2 hours waiting in line at 2 banks (it was a long weekend and the end of the month) I'm here at Krispy Kreme enjoying the free wifi while enjoying their donuts and oreo drinks. Hmmmm.... it really is very unhealthy but sweet :D

Standing Still

If you have been long time readers of my blog, I guess you know at least one reason why I don’t use my real name in my facebook account. I don’t even use it here. But the sad thing is this identity is actually who I really am.

However the recent fire that destroyed my highschool forced me to setup another Facebook account using my real name so that I could get in touch with my classmates and former”?” friends from elementary and highschool.

A lot has changed in the last 14 years since we graduated from highschool. My classmates have done something with their lives while I feel I have nothing to show. I still live in the same area, go to church in the same church while they have married, have different last names, had kids, started working abroad, earning a lot…

Sure I have some diplomas to show… but still, except for my age now, I’m almost exactly the same as I was back then. Somehow setting up that 2nd Facebook account doesn’t feel all that good.

Pet Peeve #3: Q & A

I had this professor in college who was a lawyer. He taught Philippine Constitution and Ethics and Logic. The one thing that impressed me was that he insisted that us students answer ONLY what was asked of up. If the question required a “yes” or “no” answer, that was all that was needed. I don’t know if its a cultural thing to Filipinos or that it doesn’t matter where you come from - that you have this tendency to answer more than what the question calls for.

Which brings me to my 3rd Pet Peeve - it really gets on my nerves when people during debates, panel discussions, pageants or any other public presentations don’t seem to listen to the question. I was unfortunate enough to attend church during which students who volunteered for a religious outreach activity were asked some questions about their experience.

There were 3 boys and 4 girls (I think) in that group and listening to their answers one by one really made my face flush with frustration. For example the question, “what was your most memorable experience during the outreach?” the key word being MOST. Still, every one of them gave multiple experiences. And listening to each one answer the question, “Would you still consider joining future outreach activities?” with YES, because blah blah blah blah really got to me.

I picked a bad time to leave my mobile phones at home. Texting is my stress outlet, and during this time I was really getting stressed out.