Blogger's Block

I miss blogging about stuff that makes me laugh. My friend Cris* makes me laugh with her journal entries. I read her posts and tears almost come out from too much laughing. Hahaha.

I miss that. Hope I could go back to that soon. My life now is way so serious it almost sucks to be me! hahaha!


*http://chavcr.multiply.com/journal

I think I'm in love with two boys..

quater life crisis anyone?

I think that most of our journey through quarter life crisis are as unique as our personalities. Most of my friends talk to me about it and although I try to be articulate in most things, I find myself at a loss in explaining what exactly and how to go about it. We have our own ways of understanding and facing it. I was able to read an article published in Philippine Star last Aug. 29 and although I don't agree with all of it, I find myself agreeing to most of the author said. I have copied the article below.


Quarter-life crisis
DRUMROLL, PLEASE By Gena Valerie Chua

I first heard it three months after graduation, over lunch with college blockmates.

Blockmate 1 (earns twice as much as any of us): I’m depressed. Work sucks. Is there any job that sucks more than mine?

Blockmate 2 (recently quit his job): Mine did. I was bored every day. I’m applying abroad. Do you know how much you can earn there?

Blockmate 3 (confessed bum): Money isn’t worth your unhappiness. You should be dating more, I’ll set you up with a friend.

Blockmate 1: But how can I be happy without money? Great dramatic sigh, I’m having a quarter- life crisis. Who are you setting me up with?

And there it was, the mystifying term that single-handedly captured our 22-year-old chaos. At first it sounded funny, but when the thought sank in, we were all quiet for an uncomfortably long period of time. Did we have it too?

Since then, I’ve heard the phrase thrown around a lot. After graduation get-togethers have been surprisingly frequent. It could be a withdrawal symptom, you’re all desperate to hold on to the certainty you had in school. Now that everything has become so unstructured, we cling on dearly to the people whom we shared such carefree, and sometimes careless days with. We reminisce about how our lives used to be, and how they are now. Many of us are in our third or fourth jobs. More and more are leaving the country to “find greener pastures,” joining that ever-growing diaspora like spores drawn to more fertile ground.

There is a shared sense of “lostness,” not because we have nowhere to be. No, we are all lucky enough to be somewhere, but most want to be somewhere else. Everyone tells us we are meant to be great, or at least achieve a slice of greatness. We are of that generation, the generation that has it all. The generation that never had to work for anything because it’s all instant and automated. The natural expectation to surpass those before us poses an unnerving problem: What happens if we don’t?

Maybe the pressure has been there for centuries, but never like this. The world used to be enormous, a planet of rocks we only see in science books. But now the world is shrinking.

Everything, everyone is within reach. The overwhelming proximity of it all has turned us claustrophobic. Wherever we find ourselves becomes too small a place. We are always looking for that something, the thing that will supposedly match our destined greatness.

Upon writing this article I decided to Google the term. Lo and behold, the omniscient Wikipedia had some interesting answers. Quarter-life crisis is a medical term for the phase following adolescence, usually for ages 21-30. Some “symptoms” include: (1) feeling not good enough about one’s job (2) frustration with relationships (3) insecurity about life goals (4) nostalgia for school (5) a sense that everyone is doing better than you. Furthermore, the stage occurs shortly after young, educated professionals enter the “real world”, when they realize that it is tougher, more competitive and less forgiving than they imagined.

So it’s not a 21st century thing after all. Ah, but Wikipedia doesn’t stop there. It goes on to say that today, “the era when having a professional career meant a life of occupational security has come to an end.” Indeed, it is no longer enough to get a well-paying job and do it for the rest of your life.

The lines used to be clearly drawn: you were a dentist, a doctor, an engineer, a businessman. Today, things are not as black and white. Our “real world” is now literally the entire world. We take our internships in multi-national corporations, study abroad on exchange programs, and attend art seminars in New York. We find worldwide options exceeding the imagination of those before us: techie jobs in Silicon Valley, trading in the Hong Kong stock market, even advertising for Google in hidden GoogleLand. I had a classmate who took up forensics in Maryland, while another one graduated from a famous fashion school in London. We are constantly considering so many options, debating which ones we can qualify for and which ones will ultimately help us define ourselves.

Older folks say this is generation me, me, me. We want it all now, now, now — even when we really have no idea what we want. So we end up wanting it all. They (my parents, friends of my parents, parents of my friends) shake their heads in disapproval at our inability to stay in one job.

They say we can’t stand any ounce of discomfort, any morsel of unhappiness. It’s true. We are impatient, always fleeing from one place to another — because that is what we grew up doing. Change has always been inevitable, but if there was ever a time when each year sees changes that used to span a century, this would have to be it.

As adolescents, none of our music icons had the longevity of The Beatles — every three weeks it was a new genre of sound. One minute we were shrieking fans of the Backstreet Boys, and the next we were cult followers of Matchbox 20. We have no memory of dinosaur computers; to us everything runs at 5Mbps. Our shelves of Britannica have gathered dust; we only have to go to YouTube and streams of video would unravel. We had the networking craze Friendster, but even that didn’t last.

Soon we were creating separate accounts for Multiply, Facebook and self-blogs. We shop on sites of local strangers and order via cellphone banking. Oh yes, don’t even get me started on cellphones. They have rendered everything else useless: watches, cameras, music players, calculators, dictionaries, even mirrors.

Every time the world changes a part of itself, we’ve had to change along with it. I’m not saying we should go back to the era of i’ll-be-waiting-two-weeks-for-your-snail-mail. I cannot leave the house without my phone. Maybe we’ve become little brats of technology, the spawn of an age always trying to outdo itself. If patience is a virtue, then the remarkable deficiency of it has become our unconscious vice. Our adult lives are an extension of our adolescent years, when coolness was attained by downloading mp3s of a newbie rock band before everyone else did. We are always on the move. We are fickle-minded, discontent and extremely volatile — which according to Wikipedia, are natural to those in their 20’s. But to be in your 20s at a time when clients at work are Australians you will never see past email correspondence, then it becomes a world that gives you only two choices: move, or get left behind.

We are expected to march out into the world with iPod in backpocket, one earphone pounding against an eardrum. With our bountiful gifts from mother technology and our cross-cultural media grub, we’re supposed to find a way to make ourselves great. Now more than ever, we have to prove ourselves worthy of the time we were born into. So who can blame us, for wanting to run all the time? The pressure is immense. So much is running after us and worse, there is so much we are trying to keep up with. Like the reluctant monster Incredible Hulk, we are always growing out of proportion, our clothes tearing as we expand. And so we run, gasping for air, looking for a place that can contain us.

I’m grateful for being born in an era that constantly pushes itself forward. But we were raised in a period long past mere survival, where the worst blunder you can commit is not so much failure but mediocrity. And so we make this plea: don’t be so hard on us. It may now be less challenging to defy boundaries, but the world out there is still as tough as ever. Let us have our little crisis; spare us the time that we never seem to have enough of. Give us the chance to find our own corner, where we can dig and shovel and bury ourselves in. Because when the clouds clear up — when we can finally stop twiddling our thumbs and wringing our hands in restlessness — you will see what we have built out of our chaos, and you will be damn proud.

Credits: http://www.philstar.com/archives.php?aid=2008082823&type=2

Uh-oh! They're back!

JYP is back. I think its gonna be an addicting Sep-Oct again! They're so good. I wish I was just a wonder girl..dancing and singing..and dancing and singing..



It was bad enough that I just got over this..



and this...



Now what am I going to do?? As I am typing this.. LSS mode already. I want nobody nobody but chooo. I want nobody nobody but choooo!!!

I... am.. trying to fight it......

But I can't...

Save me Prince Javanilla!!!

I need some lovin lovin..

Someone stole my identity yesterday

I received an instant message today from Sherwin Lim (sherwin_grace@yahoo.com) one of my friends asking me to look at her pictures but since its in private mode, she told me I had to provide my yahoo username and password. I had a site rater installed on my browser specifically because I always get infected by viruses. The rated flashed almost instantaneously when I clicked it and classified the site to be dangerous. I told my friend that the network firewall won't accept me browsing the link that she has sent.

I had forgotten about it and then went out to eat lunch.

As soon as I was back, I saw my yahoo messenger logged out, and I had a missed call on my cell phone from my friend Joe. I quickly called Joe to ask why he called. I was surprised when he asked me if it was true that I needed prepaid load for my cell phone. And when I said no, that's when he told me that somebody was talking to him using my yahoo id and asking him to send prepaid loads. That's when I realized what happened.

My account was hacked. And whoever this person is (I was told Sherwin's account was hacked too) started sending messages to people on my friend's list first asking the time, then later on explaining that I have this "business" of selling prepaid cards to people out of the country. And that I have many buyers waiting for me to provide them load.

I quickly logged in to yahoo messenger to tell my friends that my account was hacked and to ignore the previous messages that were sent to them. During this time, I kept getting logged out and error message of "you have been logged on to a different device" kept appearing. Ang kapal ng mukha at lakas ng loob ng taong ito.. doing his/ her stuff while I am accessing my accounts.. so talagang kung mas marami siyang mabibiktima the better.

I then realized that I have to change my passwords kasi pinu-push niya talaga ako palabas because alam ung password ko. When I did change my password, I stopped getting logged out. But the problem doesn't stop there.

I then received a lot of messages from my friends telling me "kaya pala" or "naloko din ako" or "di ba ikaw ung kausap ko?" but the worst message that I received is from someone telling me na akala niya kelangan ko talaga ung load so nagpadala siya ng 500 pesos.

I called Globe Telecom and asked them what I could do. If they would be able to provide information about the number 09279182319. They said there were technological difficulties and that there were certain limitations which I just understood as plain bullsh*t. So anyway, I asked them if they could give us the refund 500 pesos since we were not going to use it and if they could just take back the load that was sent. The customer representative said it wasn't possible. And then she goes on and gives me a situational explanation that goes this way:

CR: Maa'm hindi po namin controlled kasi kunwari po (??!!)) we have retail stores and they sell the prepaid loads for us...
Aimee: So u mean hindi niyo makukuha? Wala ba kayong quality control?
CR: Maam kasi mahirap po we have certain limitations sa mga pwede naming gawin. Gusto niyo po maam tawag kayo sa NTC
Aimee: Sa colgate naman hindi ganyan, I bought one in a small grocery store and when I was not satisfied with the quality they replaced it all. (for that story, click here)
CR: talks about more bullsh*t
Aimee: Bye.

"Making great things possible"

Hi Globe! Guess what would be great? How about if you don't consider "income" payments sent to your system of products or services that we have no plans of using? How about that? How about giving back to your customers specially to someone who has been a loyal customer for atleast 11 years? And take note, I have a cell phone postpaid account, so whether I use it all up, you have a guaranteed 1,000 pesos from me every month. How about if you give some appreciation back? Now that would be making great things possible!


I then called NTC (which I later learned to be National Telecommunications Commission) and asked what they could do. They asked me to send them a fax of complaint and the actual conversations that took place. This, I had to get from my friends who were contacted by the hacker. So after fifteen minutes, I sent them the complaint and then called them to ask what they would do about it. And this is what they told me:

NTC: Ok na ung complaint, masesend-an na namin ung gumawa nito ng warning.


Warning? Warning?! WARNING?? ano ba????? I don't know what this NTC was created for.. but i looked at their website and found this:

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) is the government agency created under Executive Order No. 546 promulgated on July 23, 1979, and conferred with regulatory and quasi-judicial functions taken over from the Board of Communications and the Telecommunications Control Bureau which were abolished in the same Order.

And on the list of their functions include:

To authorize, supervise, regulate and monitor the operation of public telecommunication services and broadcast services.

I took up a class in Administrative Law when I was in College and it may not be a lot but my understanding is that this is the administrative agency that has jurisdiction over cases that involved telecommunication infrastructures. In short, you can, yes you can make rules and laws that people would abide by in case they have misused or abused their access to communication. I don't know but this looks like such a big organization just to give out warnings to abusers.

Where exactly do you appropriate your budget?

To all my friends, I am truly sorry for whatever damage this may have caused you. I have sent out messages to my friends yesterday and if you have not received it, here goes the message:

Hello friends, My yahoo account was hacked a few hours ago. If anyone has received any messages from me asking for a favor or asking to send prepaid loads to number 09279182319, Please IGNORE it. I have already changed my yahoo account information and I hope that it won’t happen again. But if you continue to receive messages from someone claiming to be me and asking for load of money, please ignore it. I have already filed a complaint to the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) and hopefully they are already doing something about it. I’m really really sorry about this.

Whoever did this, I am assuming that you are very adept in using the internet this message is specifically for you

Mamamatay ka din. Sana makahanap ka ng paraan para mapagbayaran ang kasalanan mo bago ka mamamatay.

Ang nakakainis PINOY to. Filipino niya ako kausapin.

THE PLOT. The story is he/she is using is fairly simple and if I may say.. almost brilliant. She pretends to be out of the country or doing some business out of the country selling E-load or prepaid cards to OFWs, or foreigners and gets a lot of income because of it. In her terms, "malakas daw ang kita" Then she asks you for a favor and see her pictures, but since its on private you have to log in, kinda like how it is in multiply. But the whole page, is a BOGUS page. It was crafted to mirror the actual yahoo page to get your username and password. Then if you become idle in yahoo, this person will log in and start talking to your friends. First asking for the time, then ask where they could buy prepaid loads. Then says its really urgent. And pushes you to send her the numbers. I am not very familiar with how prepaid cards work but basically, this person will ask for the card number, password or pin and even your account information. And then maybe sells the load to other people. I'm not sure if that is convertible to G-cash. So anyway, I was gone 30-40 minutes, and this person earned 500 pesos already. Not sure if that was all.

At demanding pa siya. ANG. KAPAL. NG. MUKHA.


To reiterate:

1. Thank you to the person who supposedly sent me load. It just made me realize that no matter how weird the favors I ask from you and to my other close friends, you'd actually do the same for me. Really thanks a lot. But I'm sorry too. Libre nalang kita. :) I am keeping this person's identity secret for personal reasons.

2. To Joe, who immediately called me and informed me of what happened. Thanks for knowing it was not me. I don't know how or when you realized it.. but I'm really grateful. Buti nalang kuripot ka sakin, di agad bumibigay. Hehehe.

3. To Sherwin, the person who's account was (allegedly) hacked too. Please change your passwords and inform your friends that someone is impersonating you. Otherwise, people would think this was your doing.

4. To other people who's account may also be hacked, you have the responsibility of informing your friends of what happened so they know that it is you. And its not somebody else who really needs the money or the load.
5. To GLOBE TELECOM, you have to change your company policies. Di pwedeng hindi niyo kaya. Kasi nagbabayad naman kami ng matino. In every relationship.. give & take dapat. Di pwedeng take lang ng take.

6. To NTC, I sincerely hope you could do better. you are in a unique position to make changes. USE it.

7. And to HACKERS and PLOTTERS and IDENTITY THIEVES (if there is a term), matuto naman kayong maghanap ng marangal na ikabubuhay.. nakakalason ang pagkain na kinuha sa perang ninakaw lang. Karma karma lang yan. Dadating din ang araw niyo.


*I am still unsure if I should contact yahoo too.

10 Things I love about Norbs

I have been meaning to post something about my friend Norbs since the time we met 7 years ago. That was during first year college and we were dormmates. During that time (2001) we weren't even roommates but we still talked and spent some time talking together. The first time that we talked was in her dorm room and she showed me some pics that she had of classmates, family and friends. I remember thinking to myself that she seemed such a bratty and weak kid to be so homesick during the first few days that we were there. I didn't really know that we had so much in common until the time that I actually got to know her.

1. She is undoubtedly the easiest person to ask to come with you when you want to eat. (Haha) A normal conversation between us would go this way:

Aimee: Norbs, punta tayo wendy’s gusto ko ng wing ding tsaka ng biggie ice tea.

Norbs: E nakaligo nako e. Kakatamad.

Aimee: Magboombox meal kaya ako? Sarap din nung chicken with chili con carne or ung spaghetti meal nila.

Norbs: Sayang, nakatoothbrush nako e.

After 30 seconds..

Norbs: Bwisit ka, tara na punta na tayo ginutom mo ako bigla e.

2. She is the impending laughter that is waiting to explode. You tell her a problem and she counters it with a joke. You are frantically looking for something and she tells you she saw thrown away by somebody else. Then you later realize it was a joke. It takes a lot of getting used to, but still a Norbs in your life adds a lot of happy sprinkles in it.

3. She goes out of her way to prove that we could have honest to goodness, lesbo moments.

norbs: aimee

aimee: yeah?

norbs: depressed na nmn ata ako

norbs: eto siguro ung nafefeel mo last time

norbs: :(

norbs: na parang, wala, wala maglolove satin

aimee: :(

aimee: eh norbs

aimee: ganyan pa din nafifeel ko no

aimee: parang, its hard to love me? ganun ba?

norbs: bat ganun aimee

norbs: sabi ko nga sa friend ko

norbs: bakit kung sino ung kaya magmahal ng buo, sila ung laging sinasaktan ng someone unworthy

norbs: ganun daw ata tlga

norbs: diba?

norbs: ayan, im sad na din

norbs: aims, ganun nga ba tayo kahirap mahalin?

aimee: hindi ko alam norbs e

aimee: hmm.

aimee: kahit nga sa friends diba nafifeel ko yan

aimee: pero ako mahal kita

norbs: ako din aimee

norbs: tayo na lang

aimee: if it makes u feel better

norbs: babe

norbs: salamat aimee :)

4. She understand the mean and brat side that we both have. Its so amazing how I say one thing really bratty and she understands and agrees in the same. She works at Eastwood, I work in Makati. We never see each other because we both insist on going to the mall nearest us. Typical brats who doesn’t like compromising. And when we focus our strength in being mad or angry at one person.. well lets just say that person is shattered into pieces in our minds. So yeah beware!

5. She looks and moves exactly as her mother and sister. It’s like looking at replicas over and over. Peace Norbs!

6. The friendships she has been built throughout the years. I think some of her friends are those she has entered grade 1 or kinder with. Hi AJ!

Norbs with her long time friend Donna. (Uy!!! Ketchup Issues!)

7. She always always always look so business-like. From waking up before 5am to iron her hair, to wearing scarves, and then looking like she’s attending a business convention on our way to the beach. She pretends to be mad at first when you tease her about it but later on imagines situations and dialogues between her and colleagues that she is supposed to meet for the imaginary convention.

8. It has never failed to amaze me how she never gets tired of chatting and visiting forums and egroups and hack sites (hehehe). Hence her nick, Chat Chantiago.

9. Her whole body shakes when she is laughing.

10. The 8 years of friendship that we have.

And just because being 24 is so much memorable to her than to any other.. Congrats Norbs. Love you!!

I can never

ever.. ever.. get over being made a fool of and taken for granted by those that I love the most in this life.








over. and over. and over. and over. and over.

A happy Monday night with my friends

Cyma. Tera's night out before her US trip. Kaye's celebration night for passing the boards. And for the rest of us, good food and just a whole bunch of nonsense kwentuhan.

And just because we had to bring our own desert

With the girls :) (L to R: Norbs, Aren, Chlowie, Kp, Aimee, Tera)

Dra. Kaye Arrives. Congrats!!!

SHIRT... Chlowie + Teban = Aimee

All together now!