Book and Blog Roll

Today heard of some books I wanna include in my "wanna-read" list.

- When the Elephants Dance by Tess Uriza Holthe
- Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
- From the Borderlands: Tales of Terror and Madness

Any inputs on the books I mentioned above would be welcome. Tell me now if I'd just be wasting my time even looking for them, let alone reading them.

And I also bookmarked several blogs I'll be regularly visiting from now on,.. among them Jessica Zafra's blog and Scott Adams' Dilbert blog. Haha! Some more sources of everyday amusement =D

Hard Rock Dinner

I am soooooo full... and drowsy. Just came home from a dinner at Hard Rock, making use of teh coupons from my friend. 500yen food discount and free drinks... heaven! I ordered the fish burger and had an Alabama Slammer to go with it. Teof had a Cajun chicken burger and a martini.

Delicioso! But I almost couldn't finish my food... too much! But I dug in my heels and forced myself to eat 'em all up hehehe. So now I don't wanna sleep yet... might get nightmares and all...

The Alabama Slammer tasted nice... like juice. Not much alcohol in that.

Well... at least this Monday had a nice dinner to remember it by. Can't say the same for most Mondays of my life lol!

Sleepy Sloth

Why am I so friggin' sleepy all the time? It's annoying! I got 7 hrs of good sleep last night so I don't know why in the hell I'm yawning all the time today. Kwaaaah! Have I become so much of a sloth?! (sloth not slut, if you please! hehehe)

Anyway, the closing ceremonies of the Torino Olympics 2006 was aired live on NHK today. Germany topped the list of most medals won. Then the US, and Austria. Weird, I'd have thought Russia would be in the top three.

Let's get cooking

So I've identified some dishes I want to start off with, as well as a list of stuff I have to get to cook them up. Hopefully I'll get the hang of this cooking thing pretty soon =D

And I'm pretty much tired of the songs I've been listening to. I've realized that the same types of tunes have been on my playlists since forever. I want something different, but I don't know where to start looking, what to try out. Any suggestions?

Sunday... and bored

This Sunday's a lot like my last Sunday -- woke up late for mass and an eat-all-you-can lunch at Shakey's. Apparently, Raymond and Arnel have decided that they'll make the Shakey's thing an every-week habit. Uuuhhh... Nice. But no thanks. Hehe... pizza every week isn't for me.

Late afternoon we hung out at Arnel's, beating each other up in Dead or Alive and StreetFighter. He just purchased his new X-box yesterday and so Bev and I tagged along with the guys' gaming session. Hehe... I played a few rounds too, sometimes whooping ass, and sometimes getting thoroughly wacked.

Right now I'm feeling b-o-r-e-d though. Dunno why. The rainy day must be getting to me. Yep, it's been raining lots lately. The seasons must be changing. Woohoo! Spring is coming.. Sakura!!

I wanna google for some simple recipes. I'm trying to learn how to cook. It's really a skill I should start learning or else live on hotdogs and spam for the rest of my life. But I'm feeling lazeeeeee.....

I must find something to amuse myself.

New to RSS

RSS feeds... blog aggregators... I've been hearing about these for a long time. And now I've decided to try them out. But it isn't as easy as I thought, just click a button and there you go!

I think I'll go ask one of my friends how to do this. Will definitely save me lots of time.

Japan Wins Gold!

Woke up at 3:30am to watch the Torino 2006 Women's Figure Skating competition. And Shizuka Arakawa of Japan gave a wowing performance which earned her a standing ovation and the gold medal.

It was a perfect performance! Garnering high scores in both the technical and program components. Sasha Cohen (USA) and Irina Slutskaya (Russia) earned second and third place, respectively, and were favorites for the gold during the early part of the competition.

However, Sasha Cohen fell twice on the ice. While Slutskaya, who has been known for her almost effortless executions of her jumps, stumbled and fell, to the big surprise of the audience.

Even without these mishaps, however, I think Arakawa still would have won the gold. Her performance was strong both technically and artistically, the choreography filled with dramatic sweeps and acrobatic arches, which impressed the audience and the judges enough to give her that standing ovation. I myself was watching with mouth agape, amazed and enthralled by her dance on the ice.

Congratulations, Arakawa-san!! And congratulations to Japan for winning their first medal in the Torino 2006 Olympics.

Anticlimactic overtime

Eight hours in a working day... 7.5 hrs I idled away doing nothing in particular, then pow! Just as I was anticipating finally being able to go home early, my KP pounces on me with several sheets of P&ID checking work! Aaaaarrgh!!

Outwardly I was all bowing and smiling and pleasant while he handed me the big roll of papers. But deep inside I was pulling out all his hair, banging him on the table demanding to be let out of the office promptly at 6!

...Okay, I'm exaggerrating. But I was at least hoping he would say, "You can do this tomorrow..." or something of the sort. But all I heard was "Today's work...blah! blah! blah!", while profusely apologizing for not having given it to me earlier. Well, at least he KNOWS he should have given them to me earlier...

Hell, anyway I'll stop complaining. No big deal anyway.

Oooohh!! An officemate offered to give me discount coupons to Hard Rock! 500yen off and a free drink!! Sugoi! Only valid through February but great nonetheless! Maybe tomorrow we can even have lunch there! *wiggles eyebrows* Nyeheheheh!!!

A Detailed Account of my Sunday

Hmmm... curious.

Today (or more correctly, yesterday, since it IS already Monday) I had an eat-all-you-can lunch of pizza and pasta at Shakey's. And a dinner of hamburger with rice and a bottomless supply of drinks at Saizeriya. But now, even after stuffing myself with all that, I'm already feeling hungry?!

The human body must really be programmed to beg for nutrition at regular times of the day, and right now my stomach seems to be shouting "Breakfast please!" at me. Ssssshhhh... it's too early for that! And I'm too lazy to prepare munchables right now.

Anyway, today was fun. AGAIN, I woke up too late to attend mass at Yamate. So I just decided to go out and ambush the process people who WERE able to go to mass somewhere. I really wasn't feeling in the mood to spend the whole day alone again, seeing as Saturday already found me staying indoors for the whole day.

So after hanging out a bit near Tsutsumi, that jewelry store on the corner of Motomachi street frequented by Filipinos, I spotted Raymond and Arnel ambling along going someplace. I immediately waved to them to catch their attention.

We decided to head to Yokohama after some talking. Arnel was craving for Shakey's eat-all-you-can lunch (which he had been hankering for since last week), so we obliged and we stuffed ourselves full of all kinds of weird and normal pizza, mojos, salad and pasta. I filled two plates, determined to get the most out of my 997yen lol! But I could barely finish my second plate, so okay, I don't think I was able to cheat Shakey's out of any profits hahaha!

After that, we were off to Sofmap, to look for an X-box. Then to Yodobashi so that Raymond and I could each buy a mouse and a bag for our laptops. Mouse... check! No luck on the bag though. The one I wanted was waaayyy too expensive, so I decided to postpone my dream of bringing my laptop to Starbucks for a while more and not buy a bag just yet.

We couldn't think of anywhere else we wanted to go to, so we headed to YCAT to wait for Bevs and Nolan, who were scheduled to arrive on the morning JAL flight. Luckily, at 5pm they were already there! We split into two taxis to go to Marutani Hotel (which most people think should more aptly be called Marutani Motel hehehe), checked them in, delivered their bags, took a picture, and went out again to grab some dinner. But before that we showed them how to get to the office so they wouldn't get lost in the morning.

Dinner was at Saizeriya. Conversation was mostly about officemates (sorry, details are too... uh... well... basta! can't tell you hehehe), and we had good laughs till around 9pm, at which point we all had to split since Raymond still had to drop by my place to pick up his laptop.

We decided to pay a visit to Teof first before going on to my place, since I needed to ask how to set up the Internet. And sheesh! Found out it was just plug-and-play and the only reason I was having problems was that the server in our apartment building was down when I was desperately trying to connect. Yep.. difficult to deal with a Japanese OS when you can't really understand Japanese.. but well.. I still love my laptop =)

After that Raymond and I went on to my place. I tried again to connect to the Internet and yay!-yippee!-yay!!-yay!! It worked!! I was so happeee!! Hehehe...

So Raymond left with his laptop, and as soon as I closed the door behind him my laptop magnetically pulled me back to the chair in front of it, where I fiddled and clicked away till the batteries ran out. And so I left it recharging, tried to go to sleep but couldn't. And now I'm back on the laptop typing the longest blog entry I've ever typed in my whole blogging history.

And it's almost 4am! Eeep! Have to go to sleep!!

Too excited!

So what am I doing still awake and surfing at 3 in the morning?! And on a Monday no less!!

First let me just say...

WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Yes!! Yes!-Yes!-Yes!
I am now the official owner of a LAPTOP!! A brand new, spanking, sexy silver laptop!! Oh my preciousssss.....!!

And because of that, I could not seem to settle down in bed to force myself to sleep. Yup, I know it'll probably be hell today in the office for me - my eyelids are suddenly possessed of a mind of their own on occasions like this. But I simply cannot sleep thinking of my new laptop sitting here on my desk, ready to be used!!

And I was finally able to make the internet connection in my room work, too! So laptop + internet = hyperactive Kitty at an ungodly hour.

Too excited... yes, too excited I am... must learn to settle down and think about something else other than this laptop...

Oops... What was that?!

I can hear snoring... here... in the office...
I know it's lunchtime, and it's perfectly legal, but still... talk about getting comfortable! Lolz!

My New Bad Habit

Can anyone guess what it is? Easy enough... coming to work late!

But wait! That's not new! I've been doing this for ages. The only new thing here is now I'm doing it in Japan, too! Hahahaha!

I've resolved so many times to come in to the office earlier. And always, time and again, I fail to meet my objective. And it being winter doesn't help at all. Coz who can resist the warmth of the bedsheets in <10 degC weather? Certainly not me... lol.

I wish my alarm clock had an extra "kick-me-out-of-bed" function. That would help a lot... a whole lot!