Friday, July 27, 2012

Second Chances

Everybody deserves a second chance. That's why I want to thank RareJob for giving me one. I applied April 29. I passed the initial interview and the mock interview test. All that's left for me to do is complete and pass my requirements like scanned pictured, diploma, written introduction and voice introduction. I was given two months to complete all that. But instead of completing the requirements the soonest possible time, I took it for granted thinking: "Deadline is still two months away, I'll wait until I am in the mood to do it." Then when I was ready to accomplish it, BAM! their website was down and all impending applicants would be suspended. Just my luck! I was shocked and sad at the same time. I was blaming my "laziness" for a while. So that was that.

Until recently, I received an email message from them telling me I can continue where I left off with my application. Ah, thank you! The offer is very much needed as I am still struggling to meet both ends with my financial income. I completed everything I needed to do and RareJob approved and I am just waiting for further instructions. I really hope everything turns out well with this new job because I know will learn from this experience. I know it will help me grow in my teaching career.

Whatever happens, I will keep on striving and working hard. And it helps too if I do what I am supposed to do the first time around and not just rely on second chances. Lesson learned! Goodnight!

Edith's Longganisa

These past days my taste buds are a little picky. I have no appetite to eat breakfast and I know it's not good to start a day like that. So I ask my mother if she can cook the "no fail" meal for me - her longganisa! My mother is a meat vendor and she sells longganisa, tocino, hamonado, embutado and sometimes other products that her customer request. Her homemade longganisang bawang (garlic pork sausage) is a hit to all her avid customers and my all time favorite. I can eat it everyday. With matching vinegar or tomatoes. And because of these longganisa, our mom was able to support our study and finish college. I am never ashamed of that. Eating this reminds me how lucky I am to have a hardworking mother.

Now, let me share the recipe of her famous Longganisang Bawang:

my breakfast this morning! *yum!

Ingredients:
1 kilo ground pork
100 grams garlic, minced
1/2 tsp MSG (vetsin)
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp Lea Perrins
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt

Procedure:
Mix them all together. Put in a clean and prepared pig's intestine. Measure about 3 inches and tie it in both ends. Refrigerate.
When cooking, simmer in boiling water for 5 minutes or until the longganisa are tender. Fry in it's own oil until golden brown. Serve with rice and enjoy!

Monday, July 23, 2012

A Visit to the Dentist

I enjoy simple things in life. Reading a good book, scoring a sale, watching my son dance, enjoying and savoring a delicious meal together with my family. And I've been deprived of that last enjoyment ever since my teeth gave up on me! Time to see my dentist whom I last visited 2 years ago!

Oh don't judge me from neglecting my dental obligations. I never felt any need to visit my dentist since my teeth are working fine. I planned to get my teeth cleaned every year (it should be twice a year) but my lame excuse: I'm busy! But I can't delay seeing my dentist now. When I finally arrived at our appointment and she examined my teeth, she said it is not looking good. 17 needs dental fillings (pasta). WHAT?! That's more than half of all my teeth! :( From now on, I will take care of my teeth more. I will brush every after meal (even during merienda). and I will eat healthy, nutritious food. As much as I can minimal take of sugar only. Specific foods that help our teeth are:

Top 7 Best Foods and Drinks

1) High-fiber fruits and vegetables - High-fiber foods work like a detergent in the mouth, not only physically “scrubbing” the teeth, but also stimulating saliva flow by requiring longer chewing times. 

2) Water – Water is valuable as the final rinsing agent for foods and sugary drinks, and, if fluoridated, works to prevent tooth decay by strengthening tooth enamel.

3) Dairy products – Dairy products without added sugar help teeth in a number of ways. Cheese helps stimulate saliva, while its calcium helps replace minerals leached from the teeth. Other dairy products, such as milk, yogurt and similar products also provide calcium and phosphates; enriched milk also provides Vitamin D, which helps the body use calcium.

4) Xylitol - Sugarless gums of any kind can help boost dental health, because they stimulate saliva production and can help “scrub” teeth. 

5) A hot cup of cavity-fighter – Green and black teas contain compounds called polyphenols that interact with the bacteria that causes plaque. These polyphenols either kill or suppress bacteria, preventing them from growing or producing tooth-attacking acid.

6) Go nuts - Many nuts provide vitamins and minerals that help your teeth. These include peanuts (calcium and vitamin D), almonds (high levels of calcium that helps both teeth and gums), cashews (stimulates saliva and helps clean teeth) and walnuts (fiber, folic acid, iron, thiamine, magnesium, iron, niacin, vitamin E, vitamin B6, potassium and zinc).

7) Mining for minerals – Foods that provide vitamins A, C and D as well as calcium and phosphorus, are especially good for the teeth. These foods can be part of an overall healthy diet, as well. These include beef, eggs, fish, potatoes, spinach, fortified cereals, tofu, leafy green vegetables, beans, whole grains and poultry.

Top 7 Worst Foods and Drinks for Teeth

1) Carbonated beverages & other drinks - Soft drinks are a perennial target of nutrition police, because they add so much sugar to the national diet.

2) Not-so-healthy vitamins - Even so-called health drinks are brimming with danger for your teeth. Sports drinks are notoriously acidic and full of sugar. And vitamin waters can contain as much sugar as a candy bar. Chewable vitamins – from multivitamins to large chewable vitamin C tablets – are especially bad, because they contain a concentrated acid that tends to cling to and between teeth.

3) Mouth-drying consumables – Whether it’s last night’s margaritas that are leaving one cotton-mouthed, or one of the medications that affect salivation, a dry mouth is danger to teeth and gums. One must to take extra care to keep the mouth hydrated, from deliberately washing with water or fluoridated rinses, to mouth hydration solutions.

4) Long-lasting and sticky sweets - It’s not news that caramels and other gooey, sugary sweets are bad for teeth. It’s not just the sugar, though; it’s how long the teeth are exposed to sugar. This principle applies to any sweets, from candy to sweet drinks –sugar should stay in the mouth as briefly as possible.

5) Dried fruits – While fresh grapes and plums are considered “good” foods, if they are dried, they go from hero to villain. Already sweet when fresh, their sugars are highly concentrated as the water is dried away, and their gummy texture can cling to teeth as much as gooey candy. And worse, the fruit is packed with non-soluble cellulose fiber, which can bind and trap sugars on and around the tooth, making it worse than candy.

6) Starchy foods - Many starchy foods, including white bread, potato chips and French fries and al dente pasta, can easily become lodged between teeth and in crevices. .

7) High-acid foods and drinks - Citrus fruits and drinks contain powerful citric acid – in fact, such juice is often used as a cleaning agent. While oranges, lemons and grapefruit can be a healthy part of the diet, they should be consumed quickly, preferably as part of a meal, and the teeth should be rinsed afterward.

SOURCE: The Top 7 Best and Worst Foods for Teeth by Dr. John Moore

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Philhealth Contribution

Are you a member of Philhealth? Philhealth's vision is to provide adequate and affordable social health insurance coverage for ALL Filipinos. Their monthly contribution for a Individually Paying members is P100. When my son has been hospitalized after I gave birth to him, I was concern for two things - his health and the hospital bills. I am just being honest here. Although my main concern is my son, they can confine my son in the hospital for how many days or weeks for all I care just to be sure that he will be fine, but subconsciously I am also computing how much would the bill be? Everyone should be prepared to emergency expenses like that. I haven't and that's daunting. After three days, my son has been discharged but because I have Philhealth we were able to have discounts. Or how do I say it? Philhealth covered some of the bills so our bill was reduced. Good thing I paid my Philhealth Contribution!



This year 2012, I've been lazy and just paid for July - December contribution just now. I guess, I've been very busy. We never know what will happen to us. What if one of us needs to be hospitalized again? I better be safe than sorry and besides what is P1200 for a whole year of payment to the service it would give me? When I work full time, I  will get a more comprehensive health insurance that will cover me and my son. The security it would give me is worth the money that I will pay for  it. But of course, I would rather not use them! It's just for "emergency purposes" which I hope would never happen. EVER!

Busy Days

The past weeks have been busy days for me. Last week was my tutors Summative Test. My weekends have been occupied by configuring a software for my brother's Photobooth business. Then yesterday, I've been busy with an order in my online shoppe. To top it all, I have my son who needs constant attention. Finally, I can spare some hours in my precious blog and just shove the stress a little. And I have to do this fast because my son may wake up any minute!

Well, busy days are not quite over for me. I am now preparing for my son's 2nd birthday in September. I have less than two months to plan and work things out. With my busy schedules, I have to do it little by little. Like designing the invitation now and planning the menu, buying decorations next week, things like that. I already have a theme: game shows! He loves watching game shows and entertaining his friends ALL the time in our home. He is most happy when he's with friends, so instead of throwing a big party I decided a simple celebrations (with no force civility on his part) would make him happier. Practical but fun - that's what I am brewing up for his birthday.

Maybe after my son's birthday, busy days would be finally over...I hope so!

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Books to Ponder

As I was cleaning my hard disk drive, I came upon a lot of junk - photos, old files, sites I saved, etc. My laptop is getting a little slower and this afternoon my brother said and warned us that we never know when will our hard drives die. So it's better to save important files or be sorry for the rest of our lives. (Ok, the last statement is a little over the top) But seriously, we have to know to properly back up very important files. Because once it gone, it's gone. I came upon a document that is named 100 Books I Have to Read. I forgot where I get this but I saved it obviously for me to keep and for me read and ponder. I have a looong way to go with these 100 books and I feel incompetent and ashame to even brag I love reading! This is the serious stuff I should allot my time with. What happened to my one book at a month? -_-
Anyway, here they are:

100 BOOKS YOU HAVE TO READ
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen()
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien(¯)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte()
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling(¯)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee()
6 The Bible(N)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte ()
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell ()
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman ()
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens ()
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott ()
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy ()
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller ()
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (N)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier()
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien ()
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk ()
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger ()
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger (¯)
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot ()
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell ()
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald ()
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens ()
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ()
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams ()
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh ()
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky ()
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck ()
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (ü)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame ()
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy ()
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens ()
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (¯)
34 Emma-Jane Austen ()
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen ()
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (¯)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hossein ()
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres ()
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden ()
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne ()
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell ()
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown ( ü )
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving ()
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins ()
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery ()
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy ()
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ()
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding ()
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan ()
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel ()
52 Dune - Frank Herbert ()
53 Cold Comfort Farm ()
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen ()
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth ()
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon ()
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens ()
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley ()
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night - Mark Haddon ()
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez ()
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck ()
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov ()
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt ()
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (¯)
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas ()
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac ()
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy ()
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (¯)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie ()
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville ()
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens ()
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker ()
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (¯)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson ()
75 Ulysses - James Joyce ()
76 The Inferno – Dante ()
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome ()
78 Germinal - Emile Zola ()
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray ()
80 Possession - AS Byatt ()
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens ()
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell ()
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker ()
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro ()
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert ()
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry ()
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White ()
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (ü)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ()
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton ()
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad ()
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery ( ü )
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks ()
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ()
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole ()
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute ()
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas ()
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare ()
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl ()
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo ()


LEGENDS:
 ü -  books I have already read 
¯ -  I watched from movie
-  books I didn't completely read

P.S. What books have you read so far with these lists and what are your favorites? I'll put it to top priority list. hehe. Please do share!


Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Rest in Peace

I just read the news. Dolphy, Philippines' King of Comedy, died at the age of 83. Messages from Facebook and Twitter are pouring and reading them makes me sad too. For the past days, we have been informed of the health condition of Sir Dolphy. We have been hopeful that he will pass this illness and recover totally and we will see him again making jokes and making people happy. But that's life. That's how God wants to take back the life He has bestowed on us. Finally, Sir Dolphy would be free of all the pain and he is now peaceful in the arms of Our Creator.



We're all gonna die. That's a fact. When people close to our hearts die, we feel devastated. I remember when my Lola Paning died, when I saw her in a coffin, tears just fell from my face. She is  my favorite lola and the ones I grew up with since my mom's mother died early. My fondest memory of my Lola Paning is when we sleep over in their house. She would gently combed my hair by her hand until I drifted off to sleep. When I do that "combing of hair" to my son now, I always think of my lola. I wish she could have met my son.

When my Ninang Gay died 2010, I was shattered too. She is like a second mother to me. She looks after us, she cheers us up, she never ran out of things to say. We all love her! Her death caught us all in a surprise because, she went to the doctor for a check-up and the next thing we know she is confined and in a critical condition. Then the news that shocked us all. :( It's been 2 years since she died but when I hang around in their house, I still miss her presence. If she had live long enough to meet my son, I know my son would love her too.

Death is inevitable. I know we always hear this, but we SHOULD really show our love to people we care about before they are gone forever. Don't wait too long. Because we never know if our time is up. Life is short. Live it well!


Thursday, July 5, 2012

I love this job!

If you have twitter and you follow Kuya Kim Atienza, you will know how he always mention "I love this job!" in his tweets. I find that inspiring. I have never felt that way in any of my previous jobs. For me, it's all work. It's like dragging my feet every day and I don't feel any satisfaction. But last Tuesday, while I was going home from my tutor, hurrying up to avoid drenching in the rain, unconsciously I thought "I love my job!" Seriously. I don't get paid much or have the well-behaved boss, (I work for children under 13 years of age!) but I am happy and contented with my job. This is where I am supposed to be. That's how I feel right now. Or maybe in a few months my mind would change, lol. But right now, I am loving my job and it doesn't matter if I am an ordinary teacher. Or a celebrity like Kuya Kim. Or the President of the Philippines. If you love your job, then don't hesitate to express it and shout it to the world: "I love my job!"


Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Belly Fat

One of the side-effects of having a baby is the fat that accumulate in the belly after giving birth. For some women, it is easier to go back again to their previous waist line prior to their pregnancy. But to some, including me, it is frustrating. I used to have a flat tummy - about 24 inches waist line. But now I am on 29 inches. It kinda bothers me but not in a "big deal" way. I just want to lose a couple of inches and I'll be fine. I am busy with my son, computer class, and my two tutees that exercising is never intended on my part. I can't do diet because I lack self-discipline. I think I can do yoga. I found this video and I'll TRY this tomorrow. Emphasis on TRY. :)


2008. Must keep this image on my mind to stay motivated!