Thursday 15th March

Down in the Dumps

Such a dramatic title, however, the title fully describes how I feel right now. As graduation day draws closer and one by one, my batchmates are rejoicing over the fact that they have gotten job offers, I couldn’t help but feel bad for myself. I’m probably one of the few individuals in our batch who contacted early on by companies for interviews. I had interviews with two of the companies which I really wanted to work for and how did that turn out? Not well. I wasn’t accepted by both companies, which really sucked for me. Sure, I made it pass the initial interview, for one of the companies, I was able to reach it all the way to the third interview before I failed to qualify. For the other one, i only reached until the second stage of the screening process. It feels so bad when companies reject you. You start to have doubts about yourself, you start to wonder if maybe you’re just not good enough or maybe you should have pursued further studies and avoided this heartbreak.

 

I admit that after I received the emails stating that I didn’t qualify, I really did and still kind of do feel down in the dumps. However, if there’s one thing which I really learned in school and in my organization, it’s that what to do after these failures which will determine your future and who you are as a person. Sure, you can mope around and feel sorry for yourself all you want, however, you can chose to go the other way and rise up form these failures.

 

As I was spilling my worries to my friends (yes, I did have that moment when I felt like my entire world just crashed and I had to feel sorry for myself), they told me this, “Don’t worry. There are more jobs out there and we’re sure that something better is in store for you.” Of course at that point in time I was feeling too sorry for myself to appreciate this, but after having slept on this, I realize the wisdom in what they told me. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t arrive at the conclusion that my luck would suddenly turn around or that I should expect awesome job offers. In truth, I just arrive at the realization that maybe there was a reason why I didn’t get into those companies, maybe I wasn’t ready yet, that I had to find myself more. This morning, as painful as it was, I reread the rejection letters from both companies. At first, I felt the sting of rejection all over again, but after I braved through it, I felt my resolve strengthen. I found the strength to rise up. From these rejections, I was able to learn a thing or two, I was able to re-analyze what I did during the interviews, I tried pinpointing the areas where I did badly, I tried to look up tips on how to do better in interviews. After all of these, I took the initiative and started sending out my resume more companies. At the end of the day, if there’s one thing that I learned from all of these, it’s that one is bound to encounter failures, one does end up being rejected by their dream companies. However, what matters is that you don’t let these failures get to you. Instead, what you can do is strive to do better, review what you did and learn from your mistakes so that you can do better in the future. I think I became a stronger person because of these failures which I experienced early on.

 

What about you guys? Have you ever experienced something similar to what I did? How did you cope with it? How are you doing now?

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Monday 12th March

About Silencing

It’s been a long while since I had the chance to blog about anything and it saddens me that the first blog entry that I’m writing since my hiatus would be a simple rant about certain people silencing others.

 

I’m quite saddened over the fact that some people chose to prioritize their welfare above the interests of the majority. I’m not going to mince words, I’m going to tell the truth. I’m upset over the fact that my school’s yearbook editorial board made me remove the post that I made in our Facebook groups alerting people to check their yearbooks to see if there are discrepancies. This afternoon, some friends of mine were bored and decided to browse through the yearbook. We went from page to page and noticed that there were a couple of errors made by the board. For one, we noticed that some pictures were placed above the wrong name. My friend caught the mistake they made regarding his friend while I noticed the mistake they made with my blockmate’s. My friend also noticed that they skipped a few people in some pages. For such a small thing which can easily be addressed and fix, I don’t understand why they had to “order” me to remove my post. Is it so wrong to raise other people’s awareness that there might be something off in the yearbook? Why can’t the editorial board release a statement telling people to check their yearbooks and see if there are errors/changes which need to be fixed? Why must they have posts related to this removed and pretend that everything is all right?

 

I guess that at this point you might think that I’m bashing the editorial board and such, but I’m really not. I just want one simple thing from them: have them acknowledge that there are errors in the yearbook, have students check to see if their photos are in the right place. It’s a small thing, really. It’s better than letting people think that nothing is wrong and only have them find out 10 years down the road that they’re not in the yearbook or someone else’s photo was placed with their name. By that time, there’s nothing that they can do about it. At least at this point in time, they can still have their concerns addressed. I guess this is stemming from the fact that I know I would be upset if this happened to me, that I was left in the dark that there are some mistakes in the yearbook and I happened to be one of the unlucky people who wasn’t able to catch the mistake and only saw it after years have passed and there’s nothing else that I can do to fix it.

So with that thought in mind, I now rest my case. I just needed to let this out.

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Friday 10th February

More Giveaways!

Hi guys! I know it must have been ages since I last blogged about anything. Blame it on the academic workload. As a senior, I only have two more weeks before I shall end my final semester in the Ateneo and as such, I would like to ask for your forgiveness and maybe patience as I try to cope up with school work first. I promise that I shall write a whole lot more after I finish my academic year ;)

Anyway, a friend of mine is celebrating her birthday today and as such is having a birthday giveaway! Awesome, right? Her mechanics are pretty simple so I suggest that you guys join it ;) Here’s the link to her site where the mechanics of the contest are written! http://prettyingenious.tumblr.com/post/17369374918/giveaway-birthday-blowout-part-1 Wish you all the best! :D

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Sunday 22nd January

Lucky Week! :)

I’m not sure what exactly I did this week in order to deserve all the luck that I got, but hey, I’m not going to complain when I’m being lucky. I guess everything started last Sunday when I got home and was greeted by an email from Ms. Jerica who owns the blog inmidnight.wordpress.com. I remember joining her CBTL planner giveaway because I don’t have a planner and I wasn’t in the mood to spend money on one. It’s not that I don’t find planners worth my money or anything negative. The reason has more to do with the state of my finances. You see, what with graduation just around the corner, I’m swamped by requests from friends to travel. If you know me personally, you would know that every now and then I would get wanderlust. I guess I’m really just one of those people who enjoy travelling in order to better appreciate my surroundings. Anyway, since my mom doesn’t want to fund my upcoming trip to Boracay with friends in April, I’m left with no other option but to fund my own trip. Since I’m still studying, I’m not earning money and so I have to really save up my allowance. Now, you can just imagine my joy at finding out that I won the CBTL planner which Ms. Jerica was raffling out! I’m just new in the blogging scene and with these blog raffle contests so this is my first time to win anything! I still haven’t gotten the planner, but Ms. Jerica assures me that I’ll be able to receive the planner by Monday. So excited! I shall post again once I have obtained the planner! :D

 

The second lucky thing happened Wednesday. I was attending the L’Oreal Brandstorm University Finals in school because my friends were part of the finalists. I was simply blown away by their amazing presentations. After seeing their presentations, I felt both proud and envious. Proud because their ideas were simply amazing and innovative. Envy because I couldn’t help but think of why I didn’t join the contest with them. :( However, what happened in the past has already happened and I have to move on with life. So, during their presentations, L’Oreal decided to have a few games in between each presentation and give away some freebies! For their first game, they asked someone to bring them any product by The Body Shop. I didn’t move at once since for some reason, my mind sort of froze up and was slowly processing the information. Then, I realized that I have a lot of products by The Body Shop with me. Just my facepowder was bought from them so I immediately began riffling through my bag in search of it and rushed to the front! It was a good thing that apparently, not a lot of girls in that room at that time carry The Body Shop products around with them at that time so I was able to reach the stage first and get the prize! The prize that I got was this:

 

 

Now, the third freebie which I was lucky enough to acquire for this week was a Star Mobile Venus SQ301 when I attended my organization’s Spring Film Festival’s Gala Night, Friday Night. I guess being the president has its perks since when you invite sponsors like Star Mobile, they offer you a freebie just for inviting them. Star Mobile is a relatively new player in the market of cell phones here in the Philippines. To know more about this brand, please visit their Facebook fanpage here: https://www.facebook.com/starmobilephones. They offer some really cute and cool looking phones which are budget friendly to a lot of Filipinos. This is the third phone which I’ve received in a span of 4 months! Since I only need two phones (one for my Globe sim card and another for my Sun sim card), I decided to give one of my extra phones to my sister and this new one to my mom! I’m actually kind of feel sorry that I have to let them go, especially this new one since it looks so cute and it came in violet! On the other hand, after some thought, I came to the realization that it’s better to give it to my mom and have her use it than to see it gathering dust in my shelf. Here are some pics of the Venus SQ301 which I was given:

 

It’s such a cute, small phone and it’s dual sim!!

 

 It slides up and has a Qwerty keypad!!

A pretty nice phone for the price that it’s being sold for :)

So I guess this wraps up my pretty awesome week! Here’s to hoping for a similar or nicer week ahead since it’s Senior Year and we’re only a few weeks away from graduating! (Eep! I can’t believe how fast time flies by!) In line with the expected upcoming of exams, papers and other school requirements, I’m apologizing ahead of time in the event that I won’t be able to blog as much! Please to bear with me and still continue to read my blog! I’d really appreciate it! :D

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Wednesday 18th January

Presenting Cbox!

You read that right! Just today, I decided to install a Cbox because I want to hear from you guys! I know that this is my first time to get into blogging and while I enjoy sharing my thoughts and stuff, I also want to hear from you guys. I know that some of you might be shy in leaving a comment to one of my posts so I came up with the idea to have a Cbox instead so that you guys can drop by and maybe say a short “hi’ or ‘hello”. I’d really appreciate it if I could meet more friends through blogging and maybe this Cbox could provide a stepping stone!

Looking forward to hearing from you! ;)

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Tuesday 17th January

6th Spring Film Festival

I haven’t been able to update my blog for a while because of all the academic requirements that are piling up in front of me, as well as organization requirements.

Since nothing exciting has happened to me what with all of these matters to attend to. I’m writing this blog entry to plug my organization’s HUGE project!

 

 

Ateneo Celadon, in partnership with the Ateneo Confucius Institute and Shangri-La Plaza Mall, are once again presenting the public with 6 Chinese films to celebrate the 6th Spring Film Festival. The Gala Night shall be held this coming Friday (Jan. 20) at the Shangri-La Plaza Mall.

This event is open to public and.. the best thing about this? ADMISSION IS ABSOLUTELY FREE! I repeat, all the movies which will be shown during this week-long event is free of charge! Want to get your dose of Chinese films but don’t have the budget? Take advantage of this huge opportunity!

For more information regarding the films that will be shown, as well as their show times, kindly visit ateneo-celadon.org!

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Saturday 7th January

Feng Li Su (Pineapple Cakes)

Ever since one of my friends came back home from Taiwan and brought home Feng Li Su (or pineapple cakes as we know it), I can’t stop craving it. I’m reminded of the time back when I was in Xiamen, China and how I developed a certain fondness for pineapples there. Now, Taiwan is known for it’s extremely delicious and well-known pineapple cakes. Pineapple cakes are these small shortcake looking pastries filled with pineapple filling. Because I found myself craving for it nonstop, and seeing as I already finished the one that my friend gave me, I tried to look it up online to show my friends what exactly was I craving for. In the process of trying to look for pictures of this yummy treat, I stumbled upon an article by one fan of this treat. I found out that the pineapple filling found inside these pineapple cakes mostly consist of winter melon rather than pineapple since if the filling is made of 100% pineapple, it becomes too concentrated and ends up looking like black mush. The winter melon turns out to be a sort of regulator which balances out the fruity pineapple flavor and retains it.

Now, just tonight, my friend and I entered this Chinese store which we passed by, on a whim, to see if they had any because I was still craving for some. The brand that we found is from China. We assume that it is because of how the characters on the label looked. If something is made from mainland China, you can expect the character to be written in simplified form. Those that come from Taiwan are written in traditional form.

Here are the pictures of the Pineapple Cake which I bought earlier this evening:

 

 

I’d like to think that after I’ve tasted the best kind of pineapple cake (the one that was bought from Chia Teh in Taiwan), I’m capable of saying if a pineapple cake is good or not. Sad to say, this brand did not do it for me. It didn’t reach my standards. The Feng Li Su which I was able to eat from Taiwan had a soft and buttery break and the store was very generous with the filling. I mean, sure the filling wasn’t overflowing, however, the balance between the bread and the filling was perfect. You could taste each separately at the start then the tastes will mix into such a heavenly flavor that it’s not that hard to get addicted to it. In this version of pineapple cake, once you take a bite of the cake, the cake sort of crumbles inward. I also felt that the filling was too thin. If you take the time to look at the cake again after you bite it, you’ll see how the inside of the cake just falls in on the filling and you taste more of the cake in your mouth. It was disappointing, however, my friend did warn me how the ones which I will be able to buy outside of Taiwan aren’t as good. I won’t stop hoping though that I will be able to find one that will be able to satisfy my craving for this exquisite pastry without my having to go to Taiwan.

Just in case you’re in Taiwan and you’re wondering what this pastry and its packaging looks like:

 

See how soft and how thick the filling in the original cake is when you get it from Taiwan? That’s the pineapple cake which I’ve been craving for the past couple of days. I definitely recommend this tasty pastry to everyone! :)

In Blog Entries on Saturday 7th January by Charm : , , , 2 Comments
Friday 6th January

Late Surprises!

Today marks the end of my first week back in school after we had our holiday break. Now, while I’m reluctant to be back in school because that would mean that I will find myself drowning in homework again, I can’t deny that it’s such a pleasure to be able to see my friends and classmates again. I remember this conversation I had with one of my friends before and how we agreed that if only school didn’t entail grueling hours in class with terror professors and tons of homework, we would actually prefer going to school everyday since we would always be able to hang out with our friends.

Before we had our break for the holidays, we were swamped with tons of homework so a number of us weren’t able to buy gifts to give our friends. This Wednesday and Thursday, a couple of friends welcomed me back from break with gifts! :D

 

Here they are:

A copy of a Richard Castle book from my friend, Ramon. I can’t believe he was able to locate one! I’ve been trying to look for one ever since I got hooked on Castle. It is simply one of the best television series which I have watched. A mixture of comedy, crime solving and loving bickering between Castle and Beckett (the two main protagonists), Ryan and Esposito (my two favorite sidekicks). Anyway, the Castle (played by Nathan Fillion) in this  television series is supposed to be a novelist. I tried to look it up on the internet if such an author exists and I can’t fully explain how disappointed I was when it showed that there wasn’t a real author by that name. Safe to say, this is one of the most unexpected gift which I have received. Btw, since I’m still trying to get used to having my picture taken alone, I asked my best friend, Tiff, to pose with the book for me! :D

The items in this picture is a combination of gifts from two of my close friends, Raissa and Joan. I wasn’t able to meet up with them during the holiday what with Raissa having work already so Joan brought the gifts to school. I got a cool mug with an illustration of a fly at the bottom. I figure it’s a sort of prank. I just hope that I remember that it’s not real while I use it so that I don’t end up dropping my mug! The next item is a small boy figurine magnet from Taiwan which Joan bought while she was staying there. The next two are necklaces. The one with the anchor charm was the gift they got me for my birthday which they weren’t able to give me back during the summer while the owl charmed necklace is Joan’s second part gift to me. Yay! New necklaces to add to my collection!

The third gift which I got was an entire piece of Lindt Swiss Chocolate with Roasted Almonds chocolate from Cheryl. I wasn’t able to take a picture of it because I got sleepy while I was in class so I decided to eat it to avoid falling asleep. Ooops! Anyway, it was great to receive these gifts from my friends. It doesn’t matter to me if they gave it late, all that matters is that they took time and remembered me while they were going about buying gifts during the holiday season. :)

A few more things which I would like to leave you with before I end this entry:

 

A trailer for Castle since I insist that you start watching this series. IT IS SIMPLY AMAZING!

 

 

The next thing that I shall leave you will be this song which I heard on the latest episode of The Vampire Diaries. I simply love the soundtrack of Vampire Diaries. I get my list of sentimental songs from this series! I salute whoever is responsible for making the soundtrack of each episode of the series! :) Enjoy!

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Tuesday 3rd January

Giveaway!

I was randomly checking Facebook a few days ago and I came across this post by Marj Ramos. She owns a blog called All That Glitters and guess what? She’s having a give-away!

 

Here’s her post:

2012 is just around the corner, so here’s another giveaway to kick start your new year the most stylish way possible. All That Glitters x The Traveling Closet is giving away not just one but two pairs of fashionably cute shorts from the D.R.E.S.S. U.P. Collection. These are totally flirty and feminine closet must-haves, garterized at the back to fit small and medium frames. Join now before I change my mind and keep them for myself. LOL, I kid, I kid! :) )

 

 

So, what are you waiting for? Visit her site and join her contest before it ends! Here’s the link to her site and to her give-away: http://marjramos.com/2011/12/31/blog-give-away-all-that-glitters-x-the-traveling-closet/

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Tuesday 3rd January

Keeping Things on Track: Starting the New Year Right

I just came across something which kind of left me upset so much that I ended up eating Ferrero and Belgian Chocolates from Marks and Spencer at 9:30 in the evening. In case you didn’t know, I rarely eat after I finish my dinner. It’s like dinner signals the end of my eating for the day. Anyway, since I don’t want to start the new year the wrong way by ranting about things which I can’t seem to do anything about, I’ll write about what happened yesterday.

Yesterday, as we all know, was January 1st which means… HAPPY NEW YEAR to all of us! I know that people have been saying that 2012 will be the end of the world, but I beg to differ. Unless they mean that people will perish from too much food intake, I don’t think the world’s going to end any time soon so guys, DON’T PANIC :D I believe that 2012 offers all of us a new start, a clean slate for all of us. I would like to think that 2012 will be a year bursting with endless possibilities for each and every one of us as long as we keep ourselves open to them.

In my family, it’s routine that we spend Christmas with my mom’s side relatives while we spend the New Year with my dad’s side relatives. I’m not exactly sure how it came about that lately, we seem to have moved from spending the new year eating at dampas (a place here in the Philippines which is usually located near a body of water where you shop for your food at the market located near the area and then have the restaurants cook these ingredients for you. :D ) to now eating at buffet places. Last year, we celebrated the new year by eating at Yakimix in MOA (SM: Mall of Asia) wherein I remember how funny it was that as soon as the first sign of fireworks, everyone ran out in the middle of eating. I remember my sister running out of the restaurant with a bowl of soup with her! It was hilarious! She was only one of the few people who did that. This year, my relatives decided to hold the annual get together at The Vikings. This restaurant boasts of offering a very wide array of food and drinks! In order to celebrate the holidays, Vikings even decided to expand their menu by adding some Filipino Christmas treats such as Puto Bumbong and Bibingka. In case you haven’t seen them, here are some pics to help you out ;)

 

Puto Bumbong

 

Bibingka:

 

If you’re a Filipino, you’re bound to know what these are and how good they are. Just a bit of background, Filipinos usually buy these treats after they attend Simbang Gabi (Night Mass) which is usually held at the wee hours of the day. The line for these at The Vikings was so long that I had to wait around 10-15 minutes in line before I could get my hands on these. I even heard the lady who was preparing this say that they have to apologize to the others in line since they didn’t have enough ingredients to serve everyone these. Hmmm.. I wonder if they were really given just a limited amount of ingredients or if people have been attacking this station like crazy. A few other delicacies which you guys might want to keep an eye out when you’re eating there for dinner are the angus rib eye steak, roast lamb leg, and lechon! Oh! Pecking duck rolled in lumpia wrapper with generous portion of Hoisin sauce was good as well! For me, what really made the buffet worth it, aside from the usual salmon sashimi was that The Vikings offered Hakaw and Scallop dumplings! I don’t know about you, but the Vikings is the only restaurant I know of which offers Scallop dumplings. The desserts were nice as well, although I missed their avocado mousse. They only had strawberry :( Speaking of desserts, The Vikings was offering unlimited Chocobanana smoothie which you can avail of by ordering from the bartender.  There was also unlimited yogurt and ice cream! Although, I think the yogurt maker couldn’t handle the pressure of serving so many people that it kind of broke down for a while and the free flowing yogurt had to be stopped for a while. As for the ice cream, there were around 8 different flavors: Vanilla, Avocado, Strawberry, Mango Royale, Dark Chocolate, Coffee, Mocha and Cookies and Cream! I asked for Vanilla and Mango Royale since I love those flavors.

As I was sitting down and slowly going through my dessert, one of my younger cousins approached me and asked how we were going to have our one-on-one Monopoly Deal battle if I still haven’t finished eating. (Background: My younger cousins recently got hooked on the game and instantly asked me whether I knew how to play it once we arrived at the restaurant. Me? Know it? I’ve played it countless times in school! My org even has a set that’s always left in the org room for all of us to play in case we get bored.) I didn’t want to keep my cousin waiting nor disappoint him by not being able to play with him so I said, “We can play now if you want. I can bet I can beat you now while eating ice cream!” Knowing my cousin, of course he couldn’t back down on that challenge! So we ended up playing the game with a slight modification in the rules. When playing Monopoly Deal one on one, you need to complete 5 setts of properties. My cousin decided that we only needed to complete 4 sets, instead of the usual 5. It took us around just 7 turns before I beat him :> What can I say? I can be sneaky when I have to :) ) I let him think that he had the upper hand since he was doing all the renting and fining. I even let him steal 2 of my properties to complete a set (although, in truth, part of my strategy was to have him complete it then steal it using deal breaker :D ) So there ends the night, with me defeating my cousin while eating ice cream on the side! (Wish I could do the same when playing with friends and orgmates though!)

Here are some pictures to commemorate New Year :D

With all of my relatives on our father’s side:

 

 

With my family:

(L-R: brother, mom, youngest sister, me (I got loads darker after I went to Ponderosa), younger sister, dad)

 

How did you guys spend the New Year? Did you make any resolutions for the new year? :)

In Blog Entries on Tuesday 3rd January by Charm : , , , , 2 Comments