IFIC and a Hundred Steps Up My Fragmented Educational Ladder

A breezy update:

"We will enroll you on our IFIC program, para syang part ng LOMA, pero tungkol sa Finance..."

I was told at work. I got so excited, because for the first time in months, I'm gonna start learning again, like I did in college! I miss college. I miss studying, I miss knowing things and making more sense of this world. Thank god I got this opportunity, and for the first time, I love my boss.

Yes, all the more to love my work. Aside from my brain needs, this will give me more reason to stay. I want to be more involved at work, to keep me from thinking of better-paying jobs out there. maybe i'll put some more titles under my belt to deserve my job more. after IFIC, maybe I'll take LOMA, and then who knows, maybe the CFA program if money and mind permits.

I said "Yes, I'm up for it!"

I love that fate has heard me. I want to make more sense of what I'm doing now so that I can rationalize with myself that despite my money problems, work will make me whole. It will teach me, and maybe, educate and compensate for the lack of more relevant stuff my education has failed to provide.

I can't wait till I get my first materials. It's like going to school again, i'm so excited... I'm gonna buy multi-colored stabilos and sign pens and book marks and macchiato with cream...

-my sun is shining brightly-

A Testimonial and Hundreds of Lazy Days in the Past

I was rummaging through my things and I found this article...

...

"...What you see is what you get. There are people who embody that saying - those whom we meet and we immediately know what they're like as a person.

Keneth, or Kimoy as we fondly call him, looks like one such individual. Lean, chinito, and fair for a guy, Kimoy was born and raised in the place that has made kapeng barako famous. Living alone has made him both independent and wise beyond his years. A self-proclaimed home buddy, his hobbies consist of movie marathons, enjoying his favorite food, and spending time with his friends. Kimoy works just as hard as everyone, but what sets him apart from the rest is his brilliance with languages. He has developed quite an intense love affair with all things French, and he continues to learn more by the day.

But Kimoy's best asset is his sincerity as a person. Easy to get along with, genial, and perpetually unassuming, Kimoy makes people feel comfortable around him. Our friendship, which began that one November afternoon, has seen the passage of many years. Over coffee and the occasional shuffling of cards, one catches a clearer glimpse of this boy who has turned into a young man.

With Kimoy, despite how he looks, what you see is NOT what you always get. beyond the laughter and the cheerful persona is a person who has stood witness to the darker side of life. And with all the things that the world has brought to his table, Kimoy has struck a balance between being sanguine and melancholic; and being hopeful yet practical. His dreams are big but tampered by a kick of reality that he has come to know so well.

To Kimoy, thank you. our friendship has seen many beginnings, as well as ends. Now that we find ourselves at the threshold of the real world, we take the future into our hands and turn it into our present. Move forward bravely, but keep the past at arms length, including your memories of our laughter during those long, lazy afternoons..."

...

A testimonial I found on my school's annual. This was written by Christine Ablaza, a very close friend I met back in college. Gives me chills every time I read it.

This is the best testimonial I ever had.

More power to you, friends, I'm so glad I have you in my life.

-in excelsis-

Money, Work, and the Many Reasons I Feel so Jaded

let's talk about work.

remember i work as a service associate for french processes? My exact title is French Service Associate 1 - Montreal Segregated Funds, just so you know. Sounds out there, but it's just your usual business processor, only everything i lay my hands on is in french.

now unlike most of us, or at least most that i know, i am lucky to have found a work that makes me feel proud i have it. i love my work, for a multitude of reasons.

one, it rationalizes the four years i spent at the University, shitting away in my own multilingual world. my major was economics, my minor was french, and whenever someone asks me what my degree is, I usually end up getting a frowny face, or a hundred and one pieces of advice why i should shift somewhere else. im proud to say that i didn't waste all those years for nothing. this is a job ive been groomed for.

two, i love work because this is relatively, only ever so slightly, easier than my previous jobs. when i graduated college, i was immediately flung into the dog-eat-dog world of real estate. i worked as a collections associate, and man, was it the most demoralizing work in this entire universe. you cater to clients who are understandably very finicky. Human nature dictates that you go tiger-mode when other people hold your money. In this scenario, i used to be the "other people" and they were the tigers. i remember my worst day, it was my birthday, and i spent the whole morning rationalizing with an extremely angry and fiery client. I was arguing that I don't have the payment for her condominium yet, when she's claiming she'd already submitted it and she wants the receipt. by the time work is over that day, i found myself slumped on the blue-slate world of the toilets, thinking to myself... why? why this? after a dozen more beatings, and four months later, i found myself excusing my manager and submitting my resignation letter.

I was free, but only for a moment. the relief was fleeting. i had to find work because it was nearing the holidays and i desperately need the money. i was then employed as a technical support agent, and for days i talked for 9 straight hours over the avaya phone, trying to figure out how my stupid client bugged out his computer. i left two months later due to acute laryngitis.

so you see, what im doing now is less stressful than my previous ones. and those two reasons are the just those that stand out, among other things.

BUT... A HUGE and in ALL-CAPS "BUT..."

disclaimer: mood changes here. negativity imminent.

I AM NOT HAPPY.

I developed this mantra: "everything for the pursuit of happiness..." like in the movie. but yes it's true, that in this life, we live for our own happiness; otherwise, you've wasted a life.

Im not happy. Im stressed to my limits... not by my work, but my life.

I love my work more than my life... isn't that a bad thing? A free-spirit told me, "Leave before your work eats you. You should always put your life first," It's not that easy, J.

I am extremely stressed about managing my finances. I love my work, but after all, im still a lowly employee who rank-and-file; i dont get as much as a management trainee, or researcher. i think, for the 16 years of quality education under my belt, im being slightly undercompensated.

"Kimoy libre naman, LP pa lang richie rich ka na..." little miss A told me.

"Not really, believe it or not, im just making Php*insert figure here* a month," I replied. she double took and said, "Really? In IBM, if you're literate in some other language, they make one and a half times as much..."

I said, "I know."

..

Money, despite it's superficiality, is unfortunately my life's reality.

I talked to some other colleague who's about to resign and will be leaving for another country. She told me, "... I have goals eh, i want to do them before I turn 25. And I think I'm running out of time...' roughly... She says she might be pursuing her dreams abroad. i told her im very happy for her. and i envy her... "I wish i have the guts to follow my dreams."

actually, i wish i have the money to follow my dreams.

I want to go abroad, take up a masters degree, and come back when Im more knowledgeable. but that would command as much money as i would make in two years, at the rate im being paid right now.

uff. it's all about money. i kept telling everyone around me at work, "you know what guys, our salary must be lifestyle-based..." of course that's unfair, but in my defense, you won't always find an econ grad who's literate in french right? im only saying. i muse to myself, thinking yes i do love my work, but does it love me as much? if it doesn't understand that im a very cosmopolitan person, it would never understand how much i need the money. my urbanite is very hard to understand for most people.

"Hindi nga lahat may increase! Depende yun..."

Depende yun saan? sa pagkatao?? i think it's clear that some people are given more preference than others, which is inequitable.

"F its d pay dat's worrying u, name it and mayb we can do a compromise. But rest assurd, it will b highr. And in our call center, we offer othr competitve benefits othr than ung salary. Pde ka din namin i endorse 4 trainings abroad or f u want to stay hir, we can offer u loans or help u out in d financial aspect kung gusto mo mag-master..." a very long text message from a talent-supply representative from another company. "i'll kip my lines open fr 2 more mnths, if we recruit nobdy, the job wil be reverted back to canada. sayang naman ung exams mo. remember, we can offer u bettr benefits plus a signing bonus."

this was my correspondence a month ago with Dencomm Philippines, a call center, just before I was regularized... the offer was very tantalizing, but i declined it because it's not that easy to leave a job you love so much. plus it's a call center; even though he told me i'll only render voice half of the time, it's still a call center. im done with it, it killed my throat.

huff.

but then again, i neeed the money. i dont wanna sound greedy, but i need as much before i can focus. Im tired of asking my mum for ti-ching.

but i love my work. im not planning to leave anytime soon.

unless.

-canada-

One Birthday and a Thousand Bright Lights

Wooot!

yes, darryl is younger than i am. he just turned 22...


the people: me, aizel goldfish, len the termite, ayen is back, and darryl the birthday creature!



the event: darryl's birthday!! woot!

the place: the gasthof in makati. the food: fish fillet in aoli, baby back ribs bbq, pork whathaveyou, and puttanesca ?? (im not sure, it's pretentious). the music: house mash. the booze: bacardi 151. need i say more?


oh, and this german beer that tastes a bit heavier than our san mig.

blast!

till next year darryl! i have very high hopes for you.


nah just foolin around.

-i miss linnie! and len!-

One Cyclone and a Sea of Muddy Flood Water

you ever felt like time, despite the universal notion that it moves on one direction forever, warps itself backwards, loops, and then starts right back at a point in its history? like say if you moved forward with your life, suddenly time will play a trick on you, and you will find yourself back to point zero?

at the moment, almost 1,872,036 Filipinos feel that way, maybe even more as the day ages. I'm not directly affected by the cyclone that hit Manila the morning of September the 26th, so I'm only left to wonder how the million of dora-fied Filipinos feel at the moment. i wonder how it feels to have your stuff around one second, and then in a jiffy, it's floating away in the floodwaters. just imagine...

your collection of timed articles, clothes bought from this store and that, innocently sitting in your closet - gone. your most comfortable bed, shaped and morphed by the outline of your back as you slept those slumberfull years - gone. your dining table, withered by the constant bashing and clashing of silver spoons and china plates on evenings when you ate as a family - gone. your house, your tiny world in this vast ocean of matter and people - destroyed. brownie, your big auburn fur-ball, trained for months to teach itself how to pee on the dog toilet - drowned. your best friend, the hero who swam the murky brown waters to save a stranger - dead...

if you're lucky, you still have your family with you. if you're not, you only have mud in your hair and maybe filarial nematodes on your skin. actually, you're extremely unlucky if you're reading this article from the afterlife.

wow, that scared me a twittle bit.

anyways...

on a lighter, lighter note...

im gonna be regularized at work, for the first time in my corporate life. so... yey! i hope id get a decent increase on my salary, you know, to pay off the bills.... ;p

hmmm...

-i pray for the souls of those who perished in the floods of Ketsana-