TGIF

My Happy Self is Baaacck!!

I think I've been obnoxious for the past 2 or so weeks. (And for those people who think I've always been obnoxious to begin with, screw you! Hehehehe...)

Today I'd like to think I got my bounce back. And I'm sure the difference in moods was quite evident. Now my fingers are crossed hoping that I won't delve back into that dark mood anytime soon, although I've come to accept that that part of me will always be there.. and I just have to learn how best to deal with it when it bares its claws again.

I haven't been doing anything new or interesting lately. Although it might slightly, in a weird sort of way, interest you to know that I've established a routine of taking the 8:45am train to work these past 2 weeks. Yes, at last I've become successful at getting to the office nearer the 9am mark! I even run sometimes just to catch that train... buti na lang wala na talaga akong poise to begin with hahahah! Pero this determination to hop on the 8:45 am train has also become a sort of a quirk. Kasi, even though I step unto the platform and find the 8:41am train there, with just enough time to make a dash for it and get in before the doors close, I blithely ignore it and proceed to wait for the 8:45. Hahahah! Ang weird noh! Oh well, maybe I just refuse to stress myself at getting to the office any earlier than I already am. Maybe my body thinks getting there at 9:05am is accomplishment enough hihihi!

And I've also taken to sticking to the outdoor route when walking to the office from the station, instead of the more traditional way of going through the mall. It's because of all the pretty sakura trees lining the road going to our building. I can't believe how fast sakura bloom! It makes me happy to see how much more blossoms have been added after just one day's difference!

Hahahah! Ang babaw ko! Oh well.. I guess I'm just happy spring is here. But also a bit sad because in a few weeks the cherry blossoms will be gone.. and it'll all be green and boring...

Flower Weekend

Sakura season starting up! And yesterday we went to Sankei-en garden to see the first of this spring's cherry blossoms. Check out the pink-and-white prettiness that made us ooh and aaahh all over the place:



But it wasn't just all flowers we saw. I was literally bouncing when I spotted these vewy, vewy, cute, cweatures sunning themselves out. Squeee!!!


And what do you think happened to this house? We were wondering how the roots and dead vines grew on it like that. I wonder if anybody lives in it. It would make one hell of a landmark... "Yeah, turn left at the intersection after you see that house which looks like old tree nymphs live in it..."


So yesterday was fun and relaxing, although underneath it all I was feeling a bit down and blue. And so today, to make myself feel better, I bought these... tadah!

Yellow and blue mums (which I think are very friendly flowers), and some red tulips to bring them all together! Aren't they nice? I arranged them in the vase myself. Not so great... but I had fun doing it ^____^

My room feels much more homey now.. ~giggles~

Within Walls

Strains of unfamiliar music slipping through the silence of early morning... she shivers a little in the cold of her room, then looks at the blankets bunched up on her bed. She can still sense the warmth that she left there, the breath of her body collected during her sleep, comforted by the softness that encased her while she dreamt.

At 12mn she had woken up, and had felt the need to do something other than sleep. Still half-awake, she put on some music from a band she barely knew, and settled down to read.

Now almost 2am, she turns from staring at her bed and finishes off the last of the fruit juice she had prepared for herself. She stands up and goes to the sink, where the unwashed plates from the other night's dinner still sat there, untouched.

Untouched... that's what the world felt like at that moment. Her world at least. It was hanging there in the air, motionless, caught between the white walls of her room. She could imagine the stale smell of it in her nose, could feel the tired fabric of it rubbing against her skin.

She leaves her glass on the sink and goes back to her table. She looks at the book she left there, the page she had last been reading slightly folded at the corner. But she doesn't pick it up.

She goes on sitting there, doing nothing. Her eyes move randomly, then settle on the still-unopened box of Godiva chocolates on her desk, given to her as a gift.

She remembers herself smiling as her officemate handed her the elegant brown box, held closed with a thin strip of faintly shining ribbon. And she also remembers how, foolishy, she had felt special at that moment, even with knowing that all her other female officemates had received the same brown box of sweets, tied around with the same shiny piece of ribbon.

She laughs a little bit to herself... at herself. Those seconds of simple happiness were now sitting there in front of her, still unopened, still untasted. She wonders if, when she put one of the chocolates to her tongue, the stillness of the room would disappear, if the air around her would finally start moving.

Tires crunching on cold concrete... the sound of it makes her turn her gaze to her curtained windows. She rarely opened those curtains, rarely wanted to look at what was happening behind them. But she remembers one morning when she pulled them back, and was surprised to find a white world staring back at her. It was snowing... and she was smiling.

The cold was sharp. She held her hand up to catch the falling ice. She blew white vapors of hot breath. She felt the snow-covered pavement pushing against her feet. She drank in the warmth of a hot cup of coffee held between her hands. She watched flakes of whiteness gather on her black coat.

She shivers again, and frowns at the immovable cold that seemed to have sunk itself in her room. She thinks that maybe, if she moved the curtains aside, the windows would let in warmth and make the cold go away, just like it did on that day long ago.

But she shakes her head, and stands up on her wooden floor. She turns off the music and switches off the lights. Slowly, she makes her way to her bed. She finds her pillow in the dark, and lays her head on it. She pulls the blankets tightly around her, and closes her eyes to the silence of her life.

Microsoft Ipod

Well this provided me with my morning chuckles. It's a short reel on Microsoft's take on the Ipod packaging. It was intended to be distributed internally between teams at Microsoft to encourage their box designers to do better. But of course, amusing stuff like this tends to get out. It's a really funny way of poking fun at themselves... hehe.

Last.fm

Signed up for a last.fm account. Wow, everything online is going social. Blogging, social bookmarking, online book sharing, p2p downloads,... and now even listening to the radio. Nice.

Nihongo o benkyou-shimasu...

I have this weird plan to learn Japanese: Try to read manga! Hehehe.. so I borrowed a girls' comic book from the library the other day. The ones where the kanji characters have furigana accompanying them.

I figured since I was having difficulty learning and remembering vocab words, maybe reading them within the context of a comic book will help with my retention problems. And as an added bonus, I just might learn colloquial Japanese as well hehehe!

Or maybe I'm being too optimistic about this. Anyway, there's no harm in trying. I've been getting nowhere with my Nihongo, and to think, me being in Japan, this would be the best opportunity to study.

So really, I hope this new method will work.

Bad Days

So I haven't been my favorite person lately. And I've been quiet and irritable the past days, maybe inadvertently offending some people in the process.

Sorry about that. But that's just the way it is with bad moods. You sometimes can't help but take it out on other people, even though you know it's not a good thing to do. But I try to avoid doing that as much as I can.

I'm still not in the best of moods right now. I'm still in that to-hell-with-everything groove. So people can still spot me scowling in the hallways hehehe. But it's toned down a bit. And I've been reading stuff-and-nonsense online as a sort of therapy for myself. Reading interesting articles sort of inspires me to sit up straight and get my act together, so magazines and books really, really help.

Right now I'm thinking I'm a person with very, very bad habits. And really, I've been trying to get rid of these things that annoy me about myself.. but shit! after years of trying they're still there! Hahahaha!

Oh well... the battle's still on! Can't very well sit back and give up. There's really no other option but to keep trying.

On another note, I got Godiva truffles today from my male colleagues. It's White Day and in Japan, guys give girls chocolates, usually white ones. All the female staff in my project received Godiva chocolates from the men, and I'm lucky they included me in their list of chocolate recipients. Sugoi!!!.

Mantra

Everyone say this together with me... aloud please..

"I will come in to the office on or before 9am starting next week. I will come in to the office on or before 9am starting next week. I will come in to the office on or before 9am starting next week.."

Now if we can all repeatedly say this together 100 or so times, I'm sure the universe will hear and cause a series of events that will eventually lead to me waking up early enough to be able to come to the office on or before 9am.

If you've never had a chance to support a cause your entire life... well, this is it! My cause is as good a place to start as any. =)

Addicted

Song on endless repeat...

"Sleeps With Butterflies"
by Tori Amos

Airplanes
Take you away again
Are you flying
Above where we live
Then I look up a glare in my eyes
Are you having regrets about last night
I'm not but I like rivers that rush in
So then I dove in
Is there trouble ahead
For you the acrobat
I won't push you unless you have a net

You say the word
You know I will find you
Or if you need some time
I don't mind
I don't hold on
To the tail of your kite
I'm not like the girls that you've known
But I believe I'm worth coming home to
Kiss away night
This girl only sleeps with butterflies
With butterflies
So go on and fly then boy

Balloons
Look good from on the ground
I fear with pins and needles around
We may fall then stumble
Upon a carousel
It could take us anywhere

I'm not like the girls that you've known
But I believe I'm worth coming home to
Kiss away night
This girl only sleeps with butterflies
With butterflies
With butterflies
So go on and fly boy

Fast Fact

Interesting fact: Geisha sell their virginity to the highest bidder. They call this mizuage.

Whoah! That surprised me.

"Memoirs of a Geisha" is proving to be quite interesting...

The P&ID is my canvass.

My cupboard is dangerous. It almost dropped a 227-g box of biscuits on me. Good thing it missed. I wonder when the next attempt will be.

Del.icio.us is amazing! I'm finding nifty sites that are both entertaining and useful. Wish I could spend more time sifting through what other people have bookmarked. I just know I'll find more neat sites.

Anyway, those two random sentences aside, today I felt like a kid hard at work on his coloring book. I was stuck transferring our DP-DT map from the old P&ID to the most recent drawings... for the whole day ~_~

I imagine how I must have looked to other people, scrounged down on my table with my multicolored markers and this wrinkled expression on my face as I painstakingly colored in the lines with different patterns. I probably could have been mistaken for an artist instead of a process engineer, lol!

And who would have thought such work would be so tiring! I had to perk myself up with cappuccino from the vending machine near evening, or my brain would have continued its shutdown sequence and quit on me entirely.

Well, tomorrow I'll have to do the same thing again. I'm planning to stick my tongue out a bit and to the side of my mouth while I'm at it, to give the full effect of an artist judging the appearance of his creation. Might as well be a little crazy while doing this boring shit.

It's Hitting Me Again

I'm in the middle of another stretch of procrastination blues..And I hate it! But I can't stop myself. If only bad habits could be ripped out of one's system at will. The world would be a much better place.

At my age, I'd like to think I've developed good working habits and time management capabilities. But it does seem that old habits do die hard.

Bakit pa kasi may mga araw when my willpower seems to be at its lowest? It can't fight off my urge to procrastinate, procrastinate and procrastinate some more. And that's even with knowing I'll hate myself afterwards and that I'll be doing some major damage control when I do get back to my senses.

Haaayyy. Maybe I should start scheduling my activities around my habit of procrastinating. That'd be an ironic way of doing time management... hehehe...

Chix Adobo

Sakura all over the television. Sakura songs, sakura commercials, sakura in the news. Spring is definitely coming. I just hope we'll have a nice hanami to remember it by.

And look what I cooked up last night:


Yes, I know it's just chicken adobo, and I shouldn't be particularly excited about it. But still, me tinkering in the kitchen is a miracle in itself. So I'm just a tad proud that I was able to cook something =)

But I gotta tell yah... lahat ng adobo ko iba-iba ang lasa!! Harharhar!! I'm not a consistent cook and it just goes to show you how much inexperienced guess work goes into my cooking he-he-he!!

Pero wag ka, I'm already imagining serving exotic and elegant dishes to guests, together with wine and magnificent tableware...

Yes, I know... these attempts at self-domestication seem to be working better than I expected ~_~

Around Here

I've been here in Japan for almost two months and it's only today that I've found the time to look around my neighborhood. I've been meaning to for some time now, but the cold and me always getting home late have been constant deterrents.

Well, there wasn't really much to discover. I was hoping I'd run into a nice comics/anime shop, or maybe a grocery store selling stuff at low prices, or a place selling interesting items like the one Shizuku found while following Moon in "Mimi o Sumaseba".

Hehehe... kapal ko feeling Shizuku Tsukishima pa ako. Even though the most interesting thing I saw strolling around was just a big red brick house situated in one of the not-so-back streets. Actually, the only reason it caught my attention was that it stood out among the usually white-painted, concrete-walled houses that are common here. Otherwise, there wasn't really anything unique about it.

Seems like most people in this area are well-to-do too. I saw lots of big houses, usually with neat front porches and well-tended flowers planted in pots as decoration. I suppose you've all heard that in Japan residential spaces are quite expensive, so usually when you speak of a Japanese home it's common to think about small apartments with compact, modular furniture and appliances. So the bigger-than-usual houses in our area indicate that the people here live quite comfortably, probably counted among the upper middle class.

As for commercial establishments, definitely there's no lack of convenience stores and groceries, because these consisted most of what I saw. And one or two video rental shops. There was also a soba place, and I counted around three or four ramen shops. Boring places mostly. Oh well, I guess there's always downtown Yokohama to go to if I want interesting.

That's about it. Except for one instance I walked into a dead end, my stroll was quite uneventful. But at least I got to know my neighborhood a bit better.

Dinner Brought to You by a Lazy Person

Wehehehe! I am such a lazy ass! Guess what I had for dinner? Scrambled eggs on bread!..lol! Hardly dishes from a gourmet chef's imagination, but I'm no chef. And so I feel no compulsion to prepare dinner ala-Martha Stewart fashion. At least not tonight. I was even too impatient to wait for rice to cook, and that's why I ended up with bread instead.

But I'm full and there's Coke to cap everything off (not talking about drugs 'kay?)... aaaahhhh... I am one satisfied customer ;D

A Day of Window-shopping

I decided that today would be window-shopping and pocketbook-reading day. The idea of staying in my room alone for the whole day didn't appeal to me, and so, armed with my latest library acquisition, "The Navigator of New York", I set out to see how I could enjoy myself outdoors.

My first destination was the Yokohama World Porters. I sorta missed hanging out in malls. Even though our office is located right next door to, and right above shopping complexes, constant overtime work has prevented me from doing any mall-related activities, not even window-shopping.

Of course my first agenda was to get some breakfast. The trays of so many different kinds of bread at Le Bon Pain drew my attention, and so I ordered a species of cheese bread and a hazelnut-flavored pan, along with a small styrofoam cup of blend coffee. If you don't already know, I have a weakness for bread and coffee shops. I just can't resist the warm atmosphere that only freshly-baked bread and the smell of brewed coffee can give.

After paying at the cashier, I took my tray, chose a table and stayed there for two hours, enjoying my breakfast while reading my book. Never mind that there were other customers looking for seats, esp. when lunchtime came. I was too comfortable with my book and my bread and my coffee, I didn't want to go just yet.

When I finally tired of reading, I decided that a bit of window-shopping was in order. And when in Japan, window-shopping is definitely interesting. There are so many different kinds of shops, selling so many different things cute, unique, funny, amazing, elegant, antique, rare, appetizing, geeky... all the adjectives you can think of! The biggest downside though, is that everything is very expensive as well! Lol!

After an hour or two browsing through the shops from the first to the fifth floor, I hiked over to the Red Brick Warehouse, to do more window-shopping. I haven't been able to visit that place for such a long time, I thought it was high time I dropped by again.

It seemed some sort of event was being held when I got there. Turned out to be a "football/soccer fair". And I arrived just in time to watch a short exhibition by three practiced soccer players. It was fun watching them do mini-stunts with a soccer ball--bouncing it in all directions with their feet, balancing it on their heads, on their shoulders, behind their legs, throwing it up in the air and catching it again using different parts of their body, and even doing a backflip with the ball sandwiched between their knees. The audience cheered and clapped and was amazed.

After the little show I went into the Red Brick Warehouse to start looking through the shops. I found a really nice gold jewelry set--brooch, earrings and necklace, all embossed with a sun pattern design I thought was very beautiful. Too bad it was too expensive for me, though.

And while looking through a home accessories shop, I spied this among the displays: Hehehe! A small reminder of the Philippines right in the middle of the unfamiliar.

Anyway, after exhausting all the interesting shops, I walked back towards Sakuragicho station, where I boarded the train to Bandobashi, did some shopping and then went home afterwards.

It was a relaxing day. Definitely not the most exciting of Saturdays, but fun in its own simple way =)

After Shopping

I am zeh tired!... Just came back from pamamalengke. Didn't buy too much, but still my groceries were heavy. Am i relieved I'm home!

A couple of unplanned purchases found their way into my shopping bags, among them a small box of KitKat Wine. Yep, being the curious kitty that I am, I just had to buy some.



I'll open it later, something for dessert. I'll tell you what I think of it after that. For now, though, I needs me some rest.

Idle Work Day

So yesterday was the height of boredom at the office. Nothing to do... yep, was simply waiting for the edited UFDs so I could check them. In the meantime, I had a hell of a time trying to look busy when I'm really not. But it's okay. My KP knew I wasn't doing anything, even encouraged me to keep on reading and "studying" since I think he didn't really have anything for me to do. So for 8 hours I alternated between reading articles about refinery unit operations AND sneaking in reading Memoirs of a Geisha.

End result, I found this nice site which gives a pretty simple explanation of the unit operations involved in the refinery plant. It's a good place to start off understanding how the pieces of a refinery fit in together, and it also gives some process engineering concepts that explain some of the why questions I've always had spinning in my head.

And of course, I made some itsy-bitsy progress on the Memoirs of a Geisha book. Only a few pages. It's really difficult trying to get into what's happening in the novel while constantly paranoid that someone might be looking. Hehe. Memoirs is okay... I don't like the author's writing style so much, but the details and references to the Japan of old make it an interesting read.

Today's pretty busy though. So no idling around this time. But it's a Friday, so yay! A weekend of vegetating is right around the corner... =D

New Songs = New Me?

When I decided that I was tired of the types of songs I usually listened to, all those other tunes I never even gave the time of day to before now all suddenly sound so... cool.

Hahahaha... guess another proof of that age-old adage "It's all in the mind."

It feels sort of liberating actually. I guess in some way, listening to new songs makes me feel like a new person. That I've changed inside, even if just a little bit.

I'm reading too much into this, I know. But anyway, it doesn't matter. Basta, suggest lang kayo good artists or songs to listen to. I'm more than ready to try them out! =)