Goddess, I Am.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the few days, you’ve probably heard that my poor and rather destitute country has been made even poorer and more destitute by the latest – and possibly the meanest – of all typhoons over the weekend.

Imagine this – a month’s worth of rain fell in approximately 6 hours, all thanks to Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana), which is now wreaking havoc somewhere in Cambodia. That’s a hell of a lot of water. As of today, 4 days hence, much of the province of Rizal and some areas in Manila are still underwater.

I’m going to take a break from writing about Macbooks and weight loss supplements and my usual nonsense to join the throngs of Filipinos all over the globe appealing for help on behalf of those who lost their loved ones and homes. Please, please, PLEASE help out in any way that you can. Used clothing and other dry goods are welcome, but as of this afternoon, I heard that the Philippine Red Cross in Rizal is running out of food, so non-perishables are of the utmost importance right now.

I know every other province in the country has several donation drives going on, so please take the time to find out what’s going on in your area. Cebu City has several drop-off points for donations, and you can find the full list here.

Cash, which I strongly encourage, can be donated through various agencies:

1. ABS-CBN through Banco de Oro.

Account Number: 56300-20111

Account Name: ABS-CBN Foundation Incorporation

2. The Philippine Red Cross through your trusty cellphone load.

Just text: RED 5/25/50/100/300 to 2899 (Globe) or 4483 (Smart)

3. TXTPower.org.

SmartMoney: 5577514418667103

GCash: 09179751092

4. Worldvision Foundation accepts dollar donations through BPI.

USD Account Number: 4254-0050-08

Account Name: Worldvision Foundation

For those out of the country, you can still send help in many ways. I’m thinking the easiest – not to mention quickest – way you can help would be through Paypal. TXTPower.org is accepting donations through Paypal right HERE.

I believe there are are hundreds of other ways to donate, so there’s absolutely no excuse not to help out. With another typhoon coming hard on Ondoy’s heels (tonight, to be exact), this country needs all the help it can get.

Picking up where I left off…

I came back from Boracay a tad browner and somehow sadder than before I left. I got a glimpse of how the other half lived. I met people untethered by corporate jobs and familial responsibilities who spent their days bumming around the island and traveling elsewhere whenever they felt like it. Of course, these people probably had trust funds and stipends from God-knows-where that made such a life possible for them.

That did not stop me from coveting that kind of lifestyle, however. I started considering my options. I had this crazy idea of giving up my day job, moving to Boracay, and living off the P8,000-a-month I was earning from writing. Pretty farfetched, I know. After all, who lives on P8,000 a month in a very expensive island like Boracay? Still, I hoped and dreamed and hoped some more.

Then things started happening all at once. First, Chin got wind of the depressing rate I was getting. It was she who told me I was being taken advantage of. I was meant to get paid at least 3 times that rate for the same amount of work for starters, even more as I gained the experience. She then introduced me to the lovely woman she was writing for and who was more than willing to pay me the going rate.

While this new deal was definitely a huge help, it still didn’t address my feeling of restlessness. Once again, Chin came to the rescue. She knew a lovely Filipino couple, Paul and Rose, who worked as teachers in Bangkok, and they just happened to be looking for someone who can work as an office assistant. The pay was 15,000 baht (about $400). It wasn’t a lot but with my new writing rate, I figured I would have enough to live on comfortably, albeit simply.

For someone who had never left home before (except for those brief summer vacations to visit my dad in Manila), it was a huge and scary decision, but I took it anyway. My family and friends had misgivings, but they still supported my decision, and between all of us, we managed to scrape up enough money to get me to Bangkok and tide me over until I got my first paycheck. Barely a week after I started talking to Paul and Rose, I landed in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi International Airport in the wee hours of the morning with a suitcase full of clothes, Fita biscuits, Milo, cup noodles, and a flashlight and a Neo laptop that I got on loan (payable within 6 months) from a friend.

My first few hours in my new city was extremely harrowing. I couldn’t find Paul (who was supposed to pick me up) anywhere. I didn’t have his number (stupid, I know), and I was scared shitless. He did eventually find me, thank heavens, and I stayed in his and Rose’s place for a couple of days until I moved into a one-bedroom apartment a bit closer to the office. For 1,800 baht a month, I got a tiny bathroom, a double bed with a rock-hard mattress, and a small wardrobe. But it was clean and decent, and I fell in love with it at first sight.

The office I worked at was beside the railroad tracks across the old Don Muang International Airport, about half an hour by bus from where I lived in Pathumthani. It was a placement agency for English teachers, and my job involved developing their lesson plans and playing liaison. I met the man I married on my very first day, though we didn’t start dating until a month or so later. I guess you could say I was off to a good start.

Naturally, the office had Internet connection, so I downloaded my assignments and found research material while I worked during the day and wrote at night. By then, I was earning a cool $150 every couple of weeks from writing alone, and I enjoyed it immensely. The writing kept me busy enough to fight whatever loneliness might be lurking around the corners of my tiny apartment.

Bangkok is ripe with Filipino English teachers, and I met many of them while I worked for the agency. Now, I’ve been speaking English almost from the moment I learned how to talk, and having spent my entire career life up to this point working in call centers, I took pride in my language skills. I found the English proficiency of these Filipino teachers dismal to the point of non-existence – a very disconcerting fact, considering that they were meant to be teaching the language. They also got paid more than I did (upwards of 20,000 baht), so the hoity-toity part of myself felt mildly insulted.

My Thai boss, bitch as she was, refused to give me a teaching job, so I started looking elsewhere. It didn’t take long before I landed one, and oh, what a disaster that was! I was fired within a week (click the link for the full story), and because I resigned from the office job to take on the teaching job, I was left unemployed and just a tad broke in a strange, new city that I still regularly get lost in even after a month of living in it.

I was at a crossroads. I had two choices: I could go home, lick my wounds, and go back to my old job (my supervisor said I could), or I could stay in Bangkok and try again. At this point, however, I’ve gone right off teaching. For me, it was as pleasant as the prospect of colon cleansing. I had absolutely no talent for it and no patience for rowdy Thai students, and the thought of classrooms just made me ill. By this time, however, I’ve already started dating The Husband and it was starting to look serious, so I knew I had to find a way to stay.

And I did. I e-mailed the woman I was writing for and asked her if she had a full-time job available, and she made me team manager! I was put in charge of all the campaigns she got going on top of the writing I was doing for her. Fortune was definitely smiling on me. I started earning at least $600 a month (often a lot more), which, in turn, allowed me to live more comfortably, travel more, and move to a bigger and better apartment in The Husband’s building.

By the end of 2007, life couldn’t have been better. I was in a wonderful relationship, I had a job I thoroughly enjoyed, I traveled a lot, and I was earning more money than ever. On top of all that, I was learning so many things from my job that would prove to be completely invaluable later.

To be continued…

Every once in a while, I find myself looking back at my life just a little over two years ago. The early part of 2007 found me very bored and more than just a little bit sad. The years that passed me by saw me neither happy nor unhappy, but mostly empty with the knowledge that I absolutely had no idea where my life was going and what I wanted to accomplish.

For 3 years, I went through thankless jobs that barely gave me enough to make ends meet, let alone the chance to indulge in a simple luxury or two. More than anything else, I wanted to travel. Instead, I ended up with nothing but resentment for the things that made this desire unattainable.

I found an outlet in writing and bore no illusions about my skills. Not for one moment did I see it as a talent. It was just something that I did because I could, something that felt as natural as breathing. It never really occurred to me that this was something that I could do for a living. After all, I haven’t a modicum of formal training to speak of. I had too much respect for the written word to presume that I can make money off writing when there are others far more skilled and better trained than I was.

Maybe it was kismet, or perhaps it was just sheer luck, but of all the people that I’ve met online at this time, I found a friend in Chin, whose blogs I used to stalk senseless until I eventually found the courage to make my presence known to her. By then, she was already writing freelance, and not only did she point me in the right direction, she encouraged me when no one else would.

My first paid writing gig was for a local couple who ran a writing team. This was my first introduction to the world of keywords and keyword densities and sub-headers. They paid me P8,000 ($160) a month to write 8 (!!!) 500-word articles a day, 5 days a week. That worked out about a dollar per article, and without knowing any better, I thought that was perfectly reasonable.

The first few assignments were absolutely maddening, especially since I was still working as a Quality Assurance Analyst for my old company. I wrote articles between (and sometimes, while) rating calls. Instead of crawling straight to bed after working 14-hour shifts, I wrote and wrote and wrote some more.

I had a dream, and I was determined to reach it. It was nothing as lofty as buying a car – with auto accessories to boot! – or going on frivolous shopping sprees. I simply needed enough to be able to travel, even if it was just somewhere local. Never mind that I was beginning to look like something out of the Evil Dead.

And travel, I did. In May of 2007, I visited Boracay for the first time – a trip that became not just a vacation, but the second step towards the major life-change that I desperately needed.

To be continued…

Owning a Mac is like raising a child. It requires expense after expense, not necessarily because it demands it, but because you always want what’s best for it. I thought my darling Gaius was a handful, but really, it had absolutely nothing on Octavian.

Octavian, by the way, is the Macbook Pro that I upgraded to a month after I got Gaius. Yes, I managed to work up the courage to tell The Husband, and yes, I really couldn’t help myself. Octavian is, without a doubt, the best laptop I’ve ever owned, and I’m completely in love with him, almost to the point of altar-worship.

But I digress. In the 4 weeks that I’ve had Octavian, I’ve bought accessory after accessory. And because Octavian IS a fabulous 13.3-inch Macbook Pro – the first of his kind – most of them do not come cheap.

Here’s the rundown of, umm, ‘damages’ . . . so far:

1. A pretty pink Sumdex laptop bag – P1,850 (approximate $38).

Now, I had a perfectly good laptop bag that I bought for Gaius. I couldn’t bear the thought of Octavian getting a hand-me-down bag from Gaius, however, so I convinced myself that it was not padded enough for skinny, little Octavian (which it really was), and sold it to Chin, who I am hoping is perfectly happy with it.

2. A scarlet CaseLogic laptop sleeve with a fantastic flower detail – P1499 (approximately $30).

I wanted to give Octavian in all his aluminum glory extra protection; hence, the sleeve. Now, I am completely aware that one can buy a perfectly functional sleeve somewhere between P100 (CDR-King) and P899 (the plain CaseLogic ones – no pretty flowers!), and I really was all set to go for the latter. However, I took one look at the red one with the flower in SM, and my self-control ran off, never to be seen again.

From time to time, in the dead of night when it behooves me to take stock of my life, I find myself wondering whatever possessed me at that very moment. But then I take one look at the beautiful scarlet sleeve and how good Octavian looks in it, and all is right with the world once again. Oh, and did I mention it was reversible?

3. A screen protector – P950.

I know, I know. One can get a screen protector for P100 (again) from CDR-King. In fact, I did get one for Gaius. The problem was that it was a DIY install, and it was so badly done that I didn’t want to risk it again.

So off I went to Digital Walker (Digital Hub in some places) in SM Cyberzone where I get a cool 10% discount, simply because I’m a member of the PhilMUG (Philippine Mac Users Group) forums. (I also bought Octavian from them, and Charlie, the owner, gave me discount of almost P11,000, which was a lot more than the usual 10%!) The guy in charge of the Cebu store personally installed my screen protector, and he did it so well that you won’t even know it’s there! There isn’t a single bubble or speck of dust trapped between the protector and the screen itself. I’ve never seen such a stellar screen protector installation in my life!

4. A silicon keyboard protector – P500 (about $10).

My life revolves around my laptop since I work 16 to 20-hour days with nary a weekend free. I even take meals with Octavian on my lap, which makes a keyboard protector an absolute necessity, myself being a scatterbrained klutz.

Thankfully, I found a keyboard protector from China on eBay that’s been made especially for aluminum unibody Macbook Pros. It features black keys on see-through silicon, so Octavian’s keyboard still gets to glow in all its prettiness. Plus, I don’t have to worry about spills and crumbs anymore!

5. A trackpad protector ($9.99) and a pretty logo ($4.99).

It has always been my intention to keep Octavian as bare as the day he was born (or at least, the day he was bought), but when I discovered SkinStyler, my resolve literally flew out the window. After all, how can I resist the oh-so pretty Apple logo of old on Octavian, instead of the newer and oh-so generic white one?

The trackpad protector was a bit of an afterthought. I figured if I was getting something shipped all the way from Malaysia, I might as well make the most of it. I’m very happy how it turned out, though. I didn’t go for the more colorful designs, even when I was sorely tempted to do so, because I figured it’ll look all wrong on Octavian’s original color scheme. The logo is ostentatious enough as it is.

6. A cooling pad – P280.

Because I have so much to do all the time, poor Octavian has to work almost non-stop every day. If he was a Windows-running laptop, he probably would’ve died of sheer exhaustion by now!

But again, I digress. Octavian does tend to get really hot when I run OS X and Windows on VMWare Fusion simultaneously, and I figured he needed a bit of help. I was initially all set to get me a Belkin cooler (P1500), but I’ve been assured that any cooling pad will work just fine. And because I’ve already spent quite a lot in less than a month, I figured it can’t hurt to get a cheap one.

I got a nice, compact, foldable one from Global Village, and so far, I’m very happy with it – at least, until I saw the same cooler in pink at CDR-King. I can’t justify getting another one right now, though, especially with a reason as trivial as color, so I’m sticking to this boring black one for the moment.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like Octavian’s expenses are coming to an end. Since I bought the cooling fan, I now need a flat surface to put it on when I’m working on the couch. I have my eyes set on something called the iLap, but I’ve been told there’s a P600 CDR-King version, so I’m going to check that out. Right now, I’m just using Octavian’s box, and it’s so unfashionable, not to mention uncomfortable.

I also want to upgrade Octavian’s measly 160GB hard drive to 500 GB because I’m downloading so many movies and it’s filling up fast. And oh, I want to upgrade my DDR3 RAM from 2GB to 4GB for no particular reason other than I can and it sounds like a good idea. And I will also want another bag or two down the line because one can’t have too many laptop bags, after all.

I swear, if Octavian can go horseback riding, I’ll gladly buy him breeches. Heck, I’ll even send him to college, if he wasn’t so smart already.

Really, with a Mac, who needs children?

For as long as I can remember, my family has always kept dogs. Throughout my 27 years, we’ve probably owned about 20 dogs of varying pedigrees. We loved dachshunds best, but we’ve also had German Shepherds, Dobermans, a Sharpei, and, of course, the requisite mongrel. They came, they were loved and taken care of, they went, and they were eventually replaced.

Except for her. And she was mine.

She was a birthday present from my stepfather. I named her Champagne, a pretty name that wasn’t entirely appropriate. When he brought her home, she was fully grown and riddled with some sort of skin disease that left her scabby and hairless. I was about 19 years old and completely wrapped up in my own life. I didn’t have time for a pet (and a scabby one at that), so I spent half the time ignoring her.

Maybe it was kismet, or maybe it’s because she followed me around so relentlessly that it became impossible to ignore the intelligence in her eyes, but we started to spend more and more time together until we were almost inseparable.

Pretty soon, she was sleeping on my bed, scabs and all. It was not very hygienic, I know, but she refused to sleep elsewhere, plus I just couldn’t bear the thought of banishing her back to the flimsy rug beneath the piano bench. One simply doesn’t treat one’s best friend that way, and that was exactly what she was to me, my best friend.

Naturally, I’ve taken her to the vet countless of times to get the skin problem sorted out. We tried pet supplements aplenty, but nothing ever worked. Some drugs succeeded in sorting out the scabs, but she only lost what little hair was left on her, too. Others only succeeded to aggravate the condition further. There was even one shot that turned her skin a bright pink! She ended up looking more like a cute pig, rather than a dachshund-mini pinscher cross.

I was resigned to the fact that she’ll probably be scabby and hairless forever, and so were the family, who had gotten as attached to her as I had. She eventually had two puppies, Brandy and Martini, and we adored them to pieces. Unfortunately, they somehow ended up with the same skin disease, which was really quite heartbreaking.

That summer, my sister and I went on our yearly trip to Manila. By the time we came home, Champagne and her babies were unrecognizable! The scabs were gone, and they had fur – beautiful and dappled black and gray fur. This was all thanks to my grandfather (my mum’s dad). Apparently, he came to visit one day, took one look at them, and knew exactly what drug to get and where. It took only three shots to do what countless visits to the vet couldn’t do. We were so happy. We couldn’t think of a better way to say our thanks than to give him Martini, and they were inseparable, too.

A lot of things happened to our family back then, major things that saw us giving up our home and our other dogs (we had about 5 around this time), but Champagne and Brandy went with us as we moved from home to home. My mum and sister were as attached to Brandy as I was to Champagne, and we simply couldn’t bear to part with them, wherever we went.

The next few years saw me in relationships that were unhealthy, if not downright toxic. I was officially manic depressive and even dabbled in suicide. Champagne saw me through it all. Every time I had my heart broken or whenever I had an episode, she would sit by me as I cried, lick my tears away, and sometimes whined along with me. Then we’d go for a walk, just she and I, and maybe chase a cat or two. She always knew when I needed her, and somehow, she always knew what to do. She was smart like that. There are a thousand stories I can tell that show exactly how intelligent she was, and maybe one day I will tell them all.

Brandy died near the end of August, 2005. She was only 3 years old. One night, we just found her lying under our outdoor bench, laboring for breath. We drove all night, looking for a vet who would help us. By the time we found one, she was already too far gone. She had a seizure right there on the vet’s table, and she was gone.

It broke all of our hearts – mum’s and Champagne’s, especially. Champ started to eat less and less after that until I had to force-feed her, just so she’ll eat. Paralysis set in and she could no longer use her back legs. I had her confined at the vet’s, hoping that they could somehow make her better, but her condition only deteriorated further. When she went blind, I took her home.

Everyone kept telling me that there’s nothing else that could be done and that I should let her go to end her suffering, but stubbornly and maybe just a little selfishly, I held on. I wasn’t ready to let her go. I wasn’t ready to let my best friend go.

It was my turn to be there for her. She took care of me when I needed her most, and I did the same for her. But she was suffering, and when the paralysis spread even further, I knew it was time to let her go.

I took her back to the vet’s wrapped in her favorite blanket. She couldn’t see me, but I spoke to her almost non-stop because she could hear me. Just one shot and she was asleep. I stayed with her, hugged her, kissed her, comforted her until she just stopped breathing. She died sleeping peacefully in September of 2005.

It’s been 4 years since she left me. We’ve had other dogs since, but none ever inspired the same devotion as she did – at least, not from me.

Why am I revisiting this still-painful memory now? Because I found these when I was going through my old photos, my only pictures of my darling Champagne:

and Brandy:

Sometimes I dream of her and Brandy and Martini, who died this year, after 8 years with my grandfather. I like to think they’re all happy out there in doggie heaven, chasing cats and squirrels and butterflies to their hearts’ content.

Whenever I’m unhappy, I think about her and I never fail to feel better. Maybe she’s still watching over me. I like to think so.