Getting Ready Top 5 and Corporate People Phobia

HK + Macau Week: 3 Days To Go

Top 5 Mildly Annoying Things While Getting Ready For An
Out-Of-The-Country Vacation

5. So-so weather. It makes everything look all gloomy and depressing. Those ambivalent 7 day weather forecasts are not helping.

4. Having to pack light. And not having a non-counterfeit decent looking bag to pack into.

3. Paranoid people getting overly concerned about A(H1N1), bombs, storms and terrorists just when you're preparing a 2 hour flight to another country.

2. A little sister saying stupid stuff like how she doesn't want to go to Disneyland anymore because it's Club Day at school and she's going to miss it and how we don't need a digital camera anymore because our cellphones already has built in cameras in it.

1. Not having anything to wear!

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In other news, some corporate guy just called me and said something about vague financial opportunities yadda yadda yadda that I really didn't understand. He said he got my number from a FEU Alumni whatchamacallit and that he was wondering if I'm interested in a opportinity something but he wouldn't tell what exactly. Next thing I knew, he was setting up an appointment for next Friday where everything shall be discussed and I was (kind of) agreeing on coming because he did some speech about professionalism and work ethics or something like that.

Corporate attire only, come at 3:30pm and the company's located in Ortigas. I think those are the only information I can clearly remember. Come to think of it, I didn't even get his name because I wasn't at all interested in what he was saying. Why I said yes, I have no clue. Now I'm praying that he would forget to send the company's address so there would be no way for me to go. Plus I have the impression that he had the impression that I was a spoiled brat because he was scheduling it on Monday and I said I'll be out of the country till Wednesday.

And again with the job hunting (okay, more like, experimenting) disasters. Recently, I sent an online application to a medical transcription company looking for employees. I didn't know why I did so. Maybe because I just wanted to know more about how jobstreet.com works. 2 hours later, I was scheduled for an interview the very next day. I found out that the company was located far far from home and needless to say, I didn't come.

Now I'm getting worried that a few more missed appointments would get me on the blacklist list of companies all around the Metro. Plus the fact that I'm afraid of corporate people in corporate attires like how some kids are afraid of clowns doesn't help much. I am serious. I have nightmares about them. They look all demeaning and power hungry with those crisp suits and cold, calculating stares. I feel uneasy towards them. Especially those people in higher positions and those who convince for a living. *shiver*

I googled if there was such a thing and I found out that I'm the only one suffering from it. Because of that, I feel compelled to name this new found fear that, I believe, is slowly gripping the world silently in it's perfectly ironed hands.

So from now on, the Fear of Corporate People in Corporate Attires will be called CORPOPHOBIA.

Not to be confused with COPROPHOBIA, which is the abnormal and persistent fear of feces. Unbelievable similarity of terms not intended. At first. Ha.

Electric Bunny

wants to ride its bicycle...

Sand Sculptures

Hong Kong: 15 Years Ago

HK+Macau Week: 4 Days To Go

So my Countdown to Hong Kong posts starts here. Should have started earlier but I would be risking sounding too excited. You know, like, Little Kid Excited. Which I'm not. Really. No, seriously, I'm not.

For everybody's information in case you're wondering what this is all about, we're going on a 4 days 3 nights vacation to Hong Kong and stopping by Macau for a day. So it's like hitting two birds in one stone. One very expensive stone but after 15 years of not ever stepping out of this country, I don't think price really matters.

I kind of wondered a bit why we're going to a country we've already visited, but since 15 years ago, there was no Disneyland there, no Mickey Mouse to visit and the whole Cinderella-ish castle to take pictures off, and no detailed memory of what had happened because I was only, like, 5 or 6 years old back then, this time, I'm going back as a sponge.

Yes, a sponge. I'm going to absorb everything and anything that gets in my line of vision and other senses. I'm going to make technology my partner and bring every digital camera we have in this household. They will work for me as slaves and capture incredible pictures that I will post in the internet for everyone to see. So they better do their job well.

Anyhow, semi-preparing for the trip brought back fuzzy memories from my childhood experience there. It's true that I don't have concrete memories of the time we spent there (4 days 3 nights also if I remember correctly), but I do have retrograde flashes of what it was like.



One flash reminded me of how I almost lost my best friend "Beary Bear the Stuffed Bear" at the airport counter. Teary eyed I went back for it preparing for the worst. But it was still there and the Flight Clerk lady gave me an amused smile as she handed back to me my faithful friend. He was my only stuffed toy who got to travel to another country. He is now in my cabinet with my books probably bragging about how he went to Ocean Park and saw all the fishes or something.

There was also the experience of riding an airplane for the very first time. I was far from nervous actually. I was so mesmerized by looking at things go from big to small to a tiny speck through the window that when the airplane got high enough, I was disappointed that all I could see were blurry clouds. I thought we'll have that spectuacular view for the whole trip.

Another, takes me back on our first night in the foreign city, where we were walking through the busy streets of Kowloon, desperately looking for a place to sleep because my mom's "friend" abandoned us at the airport, hence we had nowhere to stay the night in. I remember feeling lethargically sleepy and seeing a lady give an irritated "No space, no space" reply with matching shaky hand movement to my mom's inquiry if there were vacant rooms available. Next thing I knew, I woke up on the bottom bunk of a double deck bed with my mom gone and 3 ladies greeting me hello. I cried.

Turns out, those 3 Filipino ladies let us stay at their place for the night. I cried 'till I saw my mom return from wherever she went to. Nobody could console me. After confusions and some more crying, the memory became fuzzy again and I remember transferring to a hotel where I got to watch HongKong shows I didn't understand a word of.

Of course I also remembered parts of the main reason why we were there. To tour and to shop. We did lots of touring. We went to Ocean Park and I got to be in what I call an Aquarium Room (a room virtually encased in glass, water and different kinds of fish) long before Pinoys got a taste of the same thing in Ocean Park Manila. We went to an overlooking mountain-y place, kind of like Tagaytay but with Buddha statues. My mom would point to the skyscrapers all excited, and I would think "Yeah okay. We have those in Makati." Haha.

We visited stores but I always got bored when we were in one. My mom would look at original Giordano clothes she was planning to sell back home for double the price (because they were really cheap in HongKong and really expensive back in the Philippines). I also remember an instance where we boarded a bizarre looking Pod suspended on ropes that you use to get from one side of wherever to the other side of wherever. It crosses a body of water of some sort and it would rock precariously every time somebody did a wide movement so I stayed really still. (Author's Note: I wrote the entire post before googling pictures and I found out that the Pod Thingies are called Cable Cars and they are located in Ocean Park.)

We also rode a ferry to get from one side to another. It seems like Hong Kong is surrounded with lots and lots of water. I was more terrified of the ferry than with the plane, and certainly, rocking it out at sea was less enjoyable and more dizzying than flying.

On our way back, I was less excited in boarding a plane for the second time and all I could really recall right now is how sleepy I was when we arrived in Manila. The End.



So that's that. That's all I could remember. Bits and pieces of non-chronological events that happened 15 years ago when I was still a preschooler. We took pictures but not a lot of them since that was back in the Jurassic Era of cameras with maximum shots of 36 pictures and a battery life of 3 hours.

Hopefully, this time around, I'll remember more and sleep less.

Top 5 Guessing Techniques for the NLE

You may have noticed that from my post Top 10 Ways to Pass the Board Exams, my #6 tip is "Learn how to guess correctly". Because if there's one thing I've learned from the chaotic and stressful experience of reviewing and taking the nursing board exam, it's that it doesn't matter if you've memorized the every type of protein in the body or the pathophysiology of every disease known to man (thank Obama I didn't), in the end, you are still confined to the four choices the Powers That Be has provided for you to goggle upon. And if these 4 choices fails you, these guessing strategies could be your next best friend.

Welcome, to the Holy Grail of Test Taking Strategies. These secrets have been passed from generation to generation of board exam takers. The following information is FOR YOUR EYES ONLY. Read with caution, be alert and guard the knowledge of this data with your life.

Top 5 Guessing Techniques for the NLE
(A.K.A. The Madam Auring Techniques)

5. Always be in the middle.

When it comes to figures (Laboratory Data, Normal Values) you have no idea how to even start answering, just cancel out the upper and lower extremes and settle on focusing your inner mojo vibe on the two choices in the middle. That way you have a 50% chance of getting the right answer rather than only 25%. Believe me.

4. Look for the Ugly Duckling.
The Ugly Duckling has always been different compared to her brothers and sisters. Her siblings all look the same and she feels so out of place. If you cannot decide which choice to select, look for the different one, the one pointing in the opposite direction. It, most often than not, point to the direction of your PRC License. :)

3. Mirror, Mirror
"Mirror, mirror hanging on the wall, you don't have to tell me, who's the biggest fool of all..." You need not feel like the biggest fool when answering particularly tricky questions in the board exams. Trick #3 makes use of a simple strategy even preschoolers can understand. Look and select the choice with the same word (or a word with the same meaning) as the keyword in the question. Back in Pentagon, we had the greatest time playing match up with Psyche questions Sir Jimenez has prepared for us. And believe me, this technique works like a charm.

2. Be the most irritatingly perfect Mary Sue Nurse you could be. Even if it can only be possible in your imagination.
The BON loves perfect nurses because they only exist on test papers and questionnaires. Ideal clinical settings and scenarios are the ones often written in the questions, with adequate workforce, complete and sterilized equipments without the overpopulation in hospitals, burn out of staff nurses and nonexistent supplies. Hence, the interventions and reactions of a perfect nurse is what should always be considered when answering. And they say nobody's perfect. Ha.


and if all else fails...


1. Go for the letter D) All of the Above
Not exactly rocket science but it works really well in those questions who have sentences and paragraphs as their choices. You get all mumbly jumbly with all those words and get too preoccupied in finding out the "wrong" with the sentence when in fact they're all correct. So spare yourself the hassle and the headache and just shade letter Dog. This technique works really well in CHN for some reason. One of my biggest regret is not believing in its power and ending up getting a 79 in Test II because of my skepticism.


So that's that. I'm not sure if what I wrote is actually understandable. I'll try to write a follow up post to this with examples next time. I'm too lazy to search through my mini library of xeroxed reviewers to copy 5 measly questions at the moment. Sorry 'bout that.


This message will self destruct in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...

Tomatina: The Tomato War in Spain

If you want a good reason to go to Spain... La Tomatina. Is a food fight festival where Tens of thousands of participants come from all over the world to fight in a brutal battle where more than one hundred metric tons of over-ripe tomatoes are thrown in the streets.

The week-long festival features music, parades, dancing, and fireworks. On the night before the tomato fight, participants of the festival compete in a paella cooking contest. It is tradition for the women to wear all white and the men to wear no shirts. This festival started in a casual way in 1945, but wasn't officially recognized until 1952.

Approximately 20,000–50,000 tourists come to the tomato fight, multiplying by several times Buñol's normal population of slightly over 9,000. There is limited accommodation for people who come to La Tomatina, and thus many participants stay in Valencia and travel by bus or train to Buñol, about 38 km outside the city. In preparation for the dirty mess that will ensue, shopkeepers use huge plastic covers on their storefronts in order to protect them.

Maybe I'll have to live in Spain soon for profissional reasons... and I'll go to tomatinaaaaaaaaa =D

Official site: http://www.tomatina.es/

The Proposal (2009)

Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock) is the executive editor-in-chief of a book publishing company, Colden Books, who forces her assistant Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds) to marry her in order to avoid being deported to Canada. He grudgingly accepts, under the condition that he is promoted to the position of editor. When the government investigates, the two are forced to spend the weekend with his parents in Alaska in order to sell the lie. The family suggest they could marry the same weekend, and they reluctantly accept. They start to fall genuinely in love as they spend more and more time together. Because of this, during the wedding ceremony, Margaret decides she cannot do this to Andrew and confesses the business arrangement in front of everyone--including the immigration officer handling their case. She is then told that she has 24 hours to get back to Canada, and thus goes back to New York to pack her things. Upon doing so, however, Andrew shows up at the office and confesses his love for her in front of the entire office staff, proposing marriage all over again.

When high-powered book editor Margaret faces deportation to her native Canada, the quick-thinking exec declares that she's actually engaged to her unsuspecting put-upon assistant Andrew, who she's tormented for years. He agrees to participate in the charade, but with a few conditions of his own. The unlikely couple heads to Alaska to meet his quirky family and the always-in-control city girl finds herself in one comedic fish-out-of-water situation after another. With an impromptu wedding in the works and an immigration official on their tails, Margaret and Andrew reluctantly vow to stick to the plan despite the precarious consequences.

And again with the I-just-watched-this-movie-and-it's-freakin-great-and-I-need-to-blog-it-right-now post. Just can't help myself. Ha.

Since this movie just came out this July, I cannot, for the love of Obama, find even a moderately clear digital copy of the film, one not obviously recorded by a criminal hiding a videocam inside his bag and without shadows of people getting up from their seats and doing yawn-arm moves. It's irritating and I almost got a headache from watching the unbelievably blurry video that reminded me of those P50 pirated VCDs you can get almost anywhere. But even though it felt like watching a movie from the 1920s because of the grainy quality, I managed to stick right through the end. Simply because the thing's hilarious and I missed Sandra Bullock's romantic comedy's that I grew up watching.

The sypnosis and the trailer can give you the gist of how the story was but what struck me the most and kept me asking for more are the witty quotes that the actors deliver beautifully. The main leads have tremendous chemistry and it's hard to make a romantic comedy without getting boring in the middle and sappy in the end. This film avoided all of that. Plus the physical comedy in the movie didn't cross over to sleazy or corny at all, at least in my point of view.

Here are some of my favorite lines:

Margaret: Andrew, you know I can't swim!
Andrew: Hence... the *boat.*

Margaret: The board was going to give the position to [someguy].
Andrew: ..So naturally that would require me to marry you.

Margaret: I need you in town this weekend.
Andrew: Oh..
Margaret: Is that a problem?
Andrew: Just my grandmothers ninetieth birthday. nothing, really. i can cancel it.

Margaret: What am i allergic to?
Andrew: Cashews, and the entire spectrum of human emotion.
Margaret: That's funny. That's very funny.

I'm not sure if this is showing in the cinemas here in the Philippines or you have to resort to online movie searches like I did but if in case you're willing to spend P150 for a cinema ticket or watch a video that can make you think you're going blind, then I strongly recommend this to all of you who wants to have a great romantic comedy time.