Five Things (March 16-22)

1 – My manager sent me to attend this seminar on logistics and business opportunities in the port of Lazaro Cardenas on behalf of our team. It’s my first out of the office “work” assignment that also resulted in them printing out business cards for me. I know I still have a lot to learn especially when it comes to this field and to our company, and I also still have to build my confidence in order to “network” and promote/talk about our company and our services effectively, but I know I’ll get there. One day.

The manager of the South America trade line also went there and we went back to the office together. There was a bit of awkward small talk/conversation when we were in the car because I’ve never spoken to him before, and especially not outside the office. We mostly talked about stuff such as his wife, his kid, my life in Taiwan, etc. The most awkward topic though, was when he brought up the company year-end party that allowed him to segue into asking me about K (since that’s the only one he saw). That’s when I told him about B and that that night was just a lot of people getting tipsy/drunk and doing things they knew they could get away doing. Lalalala.

2 – One of our Egyptian agents came to Taiwan and paid our office a visit. I was tasked to pick them up from their hotel and bring them to the company. Good thing their English (accent) is understandable and so we didn’t have any trouble (with small talk yet again). After their meeting in the office, we had lunch at this Islamic/Halal-certified restaurant near the office, which they were really grateful for because we took their religion/eating habits into consideration, and because they said the food reminded them of home.

3 – I have no picture of this but I had oatmeal and Ovaltine for breakfast. It’s so convenient and easy to make, and it reminds me of the ones my mom used to make for me when I was younger. It’s also something different from my usual milk + cereals in the morning.

4 – It’s been a busy work week and on Friday, I had to work until past 10PM finalizing some deliverables, but my manager treated us to an afternoon snack of waffles and latte (I ordered vanilla latte), so all’s good. Submitting my deliverables and working overtime are also all for my Japan trip, so no complaints here.

5 – TRIP TO JAPAN YAAAAY!

Five Things (March 9-15)

I know this is already more than a month ago, but I’ve finally gotten around to finishing these (they’ve been drafts for so long…) so I decided to just publish them anyway.

1 – I received another postcard from Tiff, this time from Moriguchi. Wee! I don’t even know what’s there though.

2 – Suddenly had an afternoon tea of Haritts donuts (from J) and bubble milk tea (from T)

3 – A was going on a business trip for a week so she let me “take care” of her flowers and told me to throw them out once they wilt

4 – Went to Shida for some shopping (shoes, puzzle) and crepe and coffee

5 – Productive weekend – Morning market run, Carrefour for some pasalubong shopping, haircut for B, Wufenpu for clothes shopping (them boys because I’m still on a shopping ban), workout at home, and a glass of wine and a chat with a friend

Five Things (March 2-March 8)

1 – I was able to exercise at home again (excluding the jogs/brisk walks I’ve had with Richelle in the park), after such a long time of going into hibernation. Ever since winter came, I haven’t had the motivation to exercise because of the cold. However, there have been some nights recently when it feels like spring is here and it isn’t as cold anymore. On one such occasion, my boyfriend and I decided to exercise together. He wanted me to do yoga with him because he wants to improve his flexibility, and so I looked for a short flexibility yoga video and we did it together. Then, he went on to do his ab exercises and I went back to my Jillian Michaels’ 30 day shred level 1 video. I almost died because my body just isn’t in shape anymore, but finishing that video and getting a workout in felt good. However, my body was sore and in a lot of pain days after and it started to get cold again so I became lazy again. The next time I exercised was earlier this evening and it was even worse than last time, because I decided to switch up some moves to challenge myself more and so I got really dizzy and felt like I was gonna puke. Can’t wait for spring/summer to come so that I can get back to working out everyday.

Below is one of the dinners we made together the past week. I would usually eat dinner in the office because I didn’t want to eat late at night and I have to work overtime, but on this night, I was lazy to bring dinner but I still ended up staying until 7:30PM. My boyfriend picked me up from the office and we decided to make a salad and French toast so that it would be quicker to prepare.

We also watched The Imitation Game and it’s gooood. Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley are great at what they do (in my opinion, at least) and I found the movie to be really good. Below are some pictures I took off the Internet with the most important quote in the movie.

“Sometimes, it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.”

2 – My business cards arrived this week. I hope the seminar/networking thing on Monday goes well. I don’t really know what to expect/prepare. Oh well.

I also finally got my JP visa!! It was so kind of my manager to allow me to leave the office to apply for my visa, and then claim it the following day. I thought it would take a minimum of 1 week but it only took a day. Wow, talk about efficiency! Good thing Japan’s representative office was near our office. This feels so real! I can’t wait for Japan together with my family and my boyfriend! It’ll be our (my boyfriend and I) first time traveling to a place other than the Philippines, so I’m excited to show him Tokyo.

3 – My manager was recently promoted so she decided to treat us out to lunch. It was our team, along with the president and his business secretary, like usual. We had lunch at this Thai restaurant near our office, where the servings were small so we had to order more in order to get full, but the food was pretty good (except the desserts and drinks). During lunch, they told the president about my good performance so far and my supposed good luck when it comes to securing businesses. I’ve been in the department for almost 3 months now, and I’ve already had 4 shipments. Yay! I really hope these become regular shipments though, so that I’d have a steady flow of “business”.

4 – I met up with Timothy for dinner, and it felt sooo good spending time eating, talking, and laughing with a real friend. They’re hard to come by, so I’m really thankful I have him in my life. He’s my first Taiwanese guy friend (my boyfriend doesn’t count because well, he’s my boyfriend xD) and I can say with utmost certainty that we’re reallyyy good friends and that I’m super comfortable to be around him because we’ve shared a lot of experiences (mainly grad school) together.

5 – We were supposed to stay at home to exercise and then watch a movie, but then my boyfriend’s brother asked us if we wanted to go with him to Ximending to walk around and to look for stuff he wanted to buy. We went into a lot of stores, and eventually ended up going on a mini food trip because it’s been so long since I had these (grilled mochi and cheese potato) and because I was hungry. Heehee.

Five Things (February 23-March 1)

1 – It all started with my colleague mentioning Starbucks having just released a new drink, Honey Vanilla Macchiato, and saying how it was good. Then, she let me have a sip and I agreed that it was good. After that, our manager said something along the lines of, okay fine let’s have that this afternoon. My treat! Woo!

In the afternoon, I secured a new shipment from Taichung-Rotterdam. It was an email that my manager forwarded to me a couple of weeks ago, and I was the one who provided the quotation. Suddenly, out of nowhere (because a couple of weeks have already passed), the agent replies and says they accept our quotation and to assist in moving the cargo. Since my manager was in the email loop, she saw it and praised me saying she didn’t think anything of this rate request and yet I was still able to close the deal. She praised me for being good (and lucky) and said that they really did a right thing hiring me and that they really shouldn’t let go of me in the future. Hahaha I was very flattered, of course.

Lastly, we received an email from the Mexican Trade Services about a seminar on the logistics and business opportunities of the Lázaro Cárdenas port. I actually recently saw a related news article talking about this. Because of the US West Coast port congestion, the Mexican port authorities (?) are taking this opportunity to show how convenient/efficient/advantageous it would be to use the Lázaro Cárdenas port instead. They were discussing who to send as a representative from our department, when my manager saw that the seminar was going to be held in Spanish/Chinese and decided to send me instead of my other colleague. I got excited because it was my first out-of-the-office event and because she thought of sending me. When I found out that there was going to be a networking event though, I got really nervous because I still didn’t know much about the whole process/Latin America trade line/company shiz and whatnots. I’m attending the seminar together with the manager of the Latin America trade line, which is good on one hand, because then he understands it better but on the other hand, it’s going to be sorta awkward because we don’t really know each other so I wouldn’t know what to talk to him about. Anywayyy, I just hope to learn from the seminar and to hopefully meet some people.

2 – On the same day (in the evening), I met up with one of my good friends from UP. Since he hadn’t been to other night markets here in Taiwan (aside from Shilin night market), I decided to take him to Jingmei night market. I know that it’s small and there isn’t really a lot of food there compared to Shilin, and my favorite one is still Shida, but this was the one closest to my house so we went there. Hehe. We bought some grilled food and milk teas, and then went to the park to eat, drink, and talk. It was a fun and chill night.

The next day, I “forced” my boyfriend to watch That Thing Called Tadhana (Filipino movie) with me. A lot of people have been saying how it’s good and how there’s a lot of lines that they/we can all relate to. Unfortunately, maybe because I haven’t really had a major heartbreak (knock on wood), or maybe because I’m not in that phase of my life right now, so I wasn’t really able to relate as much to the movie, or I didn’t find it as good as other people have claimed it to be.

3 – Since we had a long weekend, we decided to spend Friday out and about the city. We started by having lunch at our favorite pasta place, Mint Pasta. After that, we rode the motorcycle going from Jingmei to Beitou. It was a looong ride, lemme tell you. If you look at the MRT map of Taipei, you’d know how far those two stations are from each other. It felt like I had traversed the entire city that day.

When we got to Beitou, we looked for the Cherry Blossoms Tunnel (which was our main purpose), but it turned out to be pretty disappointing because there weren’t a lot of blooms. The lights were also broken so the nighttime viewing event was canceled.

After that, we went back to the Beitou Hot Springs Museum/park but the museum was closed and we didn’t want to bathe in the hot springs so we decided to walk around the park and eventually go to Shilin night market for dinner.

On the way to Beitou, we passed by Yuanshan and I saw that apparently, they were having the 2015 Taipei Lantern Festival there. After having dinner at the night market, we decided to go to Yuanshan to look around.

There was a lights and sounds show around this particular installation below. I wasn’t able to take note of the title or the creator though. I remember it having the words youth and dreams though. I then linked it to something Walt Disney once said, “all our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” I really liked this one and I’m glad we were able to catch the show when we got there.

4 – I remember my cousin going to this puzzle cafe called Galette before and since we didn’t have any concrete plans on this day, I suggested we try it out. My boyfriend and I spent the entire afternoon and early evening piecing together Van Gogh’s The Starry Night. It was purely out of coincidence that we chose this one because it was one of the last (good) ones left on the shelf when we were seated. It’s 300-pieces and we found out later on that if you finish a 300-pc puzzle, take a picture with it, and upload it to your Facebook page, you get free cookies. That was our main motivation for finishing the puzzle, and spending around 5-6 hours there!

What I like about this cafe is they have a nice ambiance, free WiFi, no time limit, lots of puzzles to choose from (better to get there early so that there would be less people and more choices), and they play good music (blasts from the past!). The food’s not bad either, and since they didn’t have a time limit, you could just order a food or a drink and stay there for the rest of the day (if you don’t have anything better to do).

5 – It was my first time to go to a KTV late at night with friends. I’m not a big fan of KTVs because I don’t like to hear my voice on the mic, and I’m really self-conscious when it comes to singing using a mic. I also feel like they’re expensive and especially here in Taipei, I feel like they don’t have a good selection of English songs so I would just be wasting my money by going. However, my friend really wanted to go out that night and drink, so when my other friend invited me out for KTV and drinks with his friends, I told my friend if he wanted to go to a KTV instead. He was really up for it since he likes to sing, and because there would be drinks there as well. Overall, it was a fun night of firsts. As I said, it was my first time going to a KTV late at night, first time singing my heart out to old English songs (such as Uptown Girl, I’m a Barbie Girl, As Long As You Love Me, etc etc) in front of friends, first time getting that dizzy from drinking (I stopped as soon as I started feeling dizzy and started drinking tea instead, just so I wouldn’t get drunk), and first time getting home at around 6 in the morning!

Okay, too much use of the word friend in the above paragraph. Hahaha! Here’s to enjoying (having good fun) what’s left of my youth and cherishing those carefree nights that made us feel alive! #cheesy

Five Things (February 16-22) : CNY Holiday 2015

1 – As with last year, we spent Chinese New Year’s Eve with Uncle Johnson’s family, eating at a restaurant in Longtan. Yummy food! There was a raffle and we even scratched lottery cards. I won 1, 000 from the raffle and won 200 from the lottery card. Woohoo! After dinner, we went to another of their friend’s houses and stayed there for a while. Then, we went to Uncle Johnson’s house to watch TV and to continue scratching cards. I didn’t win anything anymore though.

2 – On Chinese New Year’s day, we went to 7ku’s house in Linkou supposedly only for lunch, but we ended up staying there until way past dinner. We had steak, shrimp, salad, and fried spring rolls for lunch. After that, some of us watched TV while the others played mahjong. Then, we switched players and I got to play too. For dinner, we had the leftovers along with vegetables, chicken fingers, and pork with tofu.

3 – Met up with a new friend for dinner and then we watched Kingsman: The Secret Service after. Pretty good movie, but there were some parts I found to be out of place/weird. XDDD

4 – We went out again with 7ku’s family and we went to this seafood restaurant near Shimen Reservoir that we also went to last year because it’s Goku’s tradition to go to this restaurant once every CNY holiday. After lunch, we went to Cihu Memorial Statue Park, where you can see a lot of Chiang-Kai Shek’s statues around. You can also see pictures of the Chiang family as well as some memorabilia. It started to rain so we headed back to 7ku’s house and some played mahjong again while the rest of us watched TV. We had Napoli pizza for dinner and Magnolia ice cream for dessert!

5 – Since we didn’t have anything planned today (with Goku and Gokim), the three of us (Richelle, Roxane, and I) decided to go out for afternoon tea. One of our favorite matcha cafes had new stuff on their menu so we wanted to try them out. Eventually, two of their friends decided to join us as well. I didn’t have any friend that I could bring (HUHUHU) so there were just five of us. We had to wait for more than an hour to be seated because there were a lot of people (we were 18th in line when we got there -_-), and one of our orders also took more than an hour to be served (which the waiter also attributed to the amount of people) so we stayed there for quite a while. There was supposed to be a limit of 90 minutes but thankfully, they didn’t ask us to leave even when we reached the time limit most probably because of the delayed order. After our afternoon tea that turned into dinner, we walked to Xinyi District and looked around H&M and GU. I didn’t buy anything though, mainly because I’m on a self-imposed shopping ban until I clean out/organize my closet.

Five Things (February 9-15)

1 – I was really busy the past two weeks, with one of the reasons being that my other colleague went on a business trip to HK. She came back and brought us these yummy peeled chestnuts!

2 – Woohoo apparently I have yr-end bonus!! Totally wasn’t expecting any bec. I haven’t been here for a yr! Turns out it’s on a ratio basis (?) so I have 92 days worth of year-end bonus/13th month pay! In other work-related news, I’ve also been able to secure 2 shipments – one by sea and the other by air. Wee! I hope I get more shipments and they become regular.

3 – We had a simple little afternoon snack of French toast, strawberries drizzled with a bit of condensed milk, milk tea, and honey cake while watching a movie. I can’t remember

4 – There are so many reasons why I’m lucky to have him as my boyfriend, one of which is that he cooks for me. For this year’s Valentines’ celebration, he prepared a 3-course (4 if you count the store bought dessert) homemade meal. We had corn soup, steak with corn and broccoli sides, teppanyaki noodles, and fruit yogurt. We also had a glass each of Spanish red wine. After dinner, we walked around the park because we were so full. It was a quiet and pretty inexpensive (compared to eating out) celebration filled with love. #cheesy

5 – I’ve been with the company for 4 months now and since the Lunar New Year is just around the corner, we had our year-end party yesterday. It was my first time (duhhh) attending and the overall experience was good. I didn’t want to spend money on a dress, hair, and make-up so I just found something from my closet, put on my own “make-up”, and fixed my own hair. We had to be at the hotel before 3PM, and the rest of the afternoon was spent listening to different managers/departments presenting the annual review/look back on how the past year has been and then also listening to our CEO and Vice-CEOs (?) talk about the past year and the year to come. Then, we had the recognition ceremony for employees that have been with the company for 5/10/15/20/30 years, and then we had the raffle (but you had to have been with the company for a year to be eligible so I wasn’t part of it). After that, we had some time to go to the lobby for photo sessions and then we went back inside the ballroom for the dinner event. There was a long pause after the 3rd dish came out, and everyone spent this time going around the room paying respect/toasting to older/more senior people. Apparently, it’s mandatory and that’s how it’s done every year.

At first, I didn’t know that there was going to be an after-party and I thought that it was a department thing, that it was up to each department if they wanted to go out after the official year-end party. Turns out, our company reserved some rooms at the nearby KTV for the use and enjoyment of the employees. I got dragged to the KTV by tipsy/half-drunk people and it’s something I don’t regret. “Seize the moment and who knows? It might just be something you’ll remember for the rest of your life.”

Since it was my first time, I wanted to experience the whole thing. I wanted to see what people did and how the after-party would be. It was so much fun watching the drunk people and it was also fun meeting and getting introduced to a lot of new people. I was also very flattered that quite a number of guys told me that I’m pretty. Hahaha I know they might not have been sincere, or they were under the influence of alcohol, but whatever. My hands were also held multiple times, and I was also hugged a lot. I didn’t mind because I have a lot of guy friends back in the Philippines and I feel like hugging is normal anyway. I told my boyfriend everything that happened that night, so all’s good. It was a fun night and it’s something that I’m going to remember for a very long time. I just wished I drank more and let loose more. Harhar.

Incomplete #ootd c/o my colleague

 

I had to have a picture with the import department

 

The 3-woman ISS department

 

Together with Taipei HQ’s president and his business secretary. I don’t know how to pose. Hahaha!

 

Decided to take a selfie when I got home, despite me already being a mess XD

 

Five Things (February 2-8)

1 – I had been craving for sushi for quite some time now, so when my manager told me that we would be eating out at a Japanese restaurant, I got really excited. Plus, it’s free food! Because our 3-woman team/department is directly under the president, I get to enjoy stuff like these – occasional free lunches and insider information. I get to be privy to information such as future plans and projects. I’m not going to be sharing them here of course.

Sooo happy for this lunch because I’d been craving for sashimi/sushi for some time now. Yuuum! It was my first time eating fried shrimp head and fish head cartilage (??)! We also had Botan prawn (牡丹蝦), roasted conger eel (穴子), grilled salmon head (鹽烤鮭魚頭), and fried platter, among others. :D #lunchout #workperks #freefood #happythea #latepost

First time drinking sake. Boss asks, “It’s sweet, isn’t it?” I say yes. Boss then goes, “And that’s how you get drunk…” referring to people who rapidly drink sweet(er) alcohol because the alcohol aftertaste isn’t as strong. XDD #adenfilter #latepost #workperks #experiences

2 – My manager told me that I might be attending an international conference toward the latter part of the year, either in Hong Kong or Guangzhou. Hopefully it’s HK, because to be honest, I’m not too keen on going to mainland China. But anywhere is good. Her plan is to send me together with my other colleague so that she can act as my guide and I can observe what happens/what we do when we attend such conferences. If she can’t afford to have us both out of the office at that time, then she’ll assign someone else (maybe from our other branch offices) to go with me. Let’s see! I hope I really get the opportunity to travel abroad and go on business trips. I know it’s going to be stressful and hectic, but it will also be a chance for me to learn new things, to grow, and to challenge myself. She also told me again how she plans on letting me take charge of the US/Canada trade line and eventually the South America trade line as well. There might also be classes regarding these trade lines in the future that I would have to attend. I’m all for it! Woohoo.

3 – I don’t know when or how it started, but sometimes, my hair becomes wavy. Decided to take a picture along with an #ootd because I felt like it was cute. I don’t think the pictures reflect that though. Hahaha oh well, what’s important is that I felt happy that day.

4 – The import department threw a mini-celebration for my first real friend in the company. Since I’m not in the department anymore, I didn’t know about it. However, I didn’t bring lunch that day and so I ordered lunch together with them, and I also asked her if I could eat with them. She then told me about the mini-celebration and invited me to go into the room with her. I’m really thankful that I was assigned to the import department for my first rotation/internship experience because despite the stress and the heavy workload, I got to know nice and fun people. There are a lot of of days when I miss them and I want to go back, but thing is and especially at this point in my life, I feel like growth and opportunities are greater than the people/friendship. I might regret this someday, but that’s how I currently feel. It gets lonely but, c’est la vie.

5 – The last haircut I had was around 9 months ago, so it was high time I had another one! My hair had a lot of split ends and it was getting flat and lifeless so I went to the salon for a hair treatment and a haircut. Hello to livelier hair (for the meantime, at least). I wanted to dye my hair again but I’ve put myself on an “unnecessary spending ban” because I need to save for my upcoming Japan trip and because I have to give out Lunar New Year red envelopes, and so maybe I can go back after a couple of months and have another haircut along with dyeing my hair reddish purple.

Five Things (January 26-February 1)

1 – Since I work overtime everyday, and I get home pretty late, my boyfriend decided that he would make me packed dinners so that I won’t have to eat so late. I can eat at an earlier time and wouldn’t have to spend extra money buying food from outside. So for the past week, I’ve been eating sandwiches at night. Below is a picture of one of those nights – BLT sandwich but made with ham instead, and with cheese! Doesn’t it look really good and mouth-watering? A variation is egg instead of cheese, or both egg and cheese. Hahaha!

My manager and colleague even jokingly asked if I could also ask my boyfriend to make one for them because they said it looked really good, so he also made one for them last Friday.

2 – My colleague naked brownies again and gave us some. They’re so good! They’re chewy and chocolatey, and they have walnuts! Yuuuum.

3 – This third one is actually a compilation of work-related stuff that have made me happy/smile this week. Our team had lunch outside the office and we talked about a lot of work stuff (I mainly just listened). First is talks of eventually sending me to Latin America to visit/look for agents and to attend conferences, second is that it’s our 35th year anniversary this October and our team will be in charge of organizing ALL the events (main and side) related to our celebration. According to them, we’re going to be crazy busy in the months leading up to, and on our anniversary month. Ooh pretty exciting!

4 – I just felt happy with my outfits.

5 – I was finally able to eat at KGB! It’s this burger place located in Shida and every time my friends and I would decide to eat there before, there would always be a long line and we’d end up choosing another restaurant. This time however, we were able to get seats (probably also because there were just 2 of us). I ordered the Feta, Tzatziki, and Avocado beef burger with a side of Apple and Walnut salad. It’s different from all the other burgers I’ve tried before, and it’s pretty good, but I felt that there wasn’t enough avocado slices.

Five Things (January 19-25)

1 – Dinner with some of my grad school/Taiwanese friends finally pushed through. It’s been so long since we’ve been talking about meeting up again (the last time we met up was last September) but everyone’s been busy with our own things and so we never had the chance to meet up again. This time, we met up on a Monday at this vegetarian restaurant near Shixin University. The food was good and it was really filling. We just spent the night talking about what’s been happening in our lives the past few months, and also about other people. Timothy ended up paying for dinner (I dunno why) but he insisted that it was his treat, so yay!

Trying out a new place with old friends :)

Had vegetarian food and non alcoholic beverages (from Belgium and Germany) last night :) pretty good. :)

FINALLY found the time to meet up. Such a grainy picture xD

2 – We were looking for a new restaurant to try and B discovered this Groupon deal for this one and so we ended up going there. It’s a Korean BBQ/hotpot restaurant that serves different kinds of meat, clams, shrimp, and other hotpot ingredients. They also have unlimited drinks and ice cream. We ate a looot.

Korean BBQ restaurant. All you can eat meat, clam, and shrimp (among other things). Yizz, another food post.

3 – I almost always walk outside the office after having lunch because I don’t want to just sit around after eating. After around 10-20 minutes of walking around, I would return to the office and take a nap. Hihi. I discovered this park on one of my noon walks and since the sun was out that day, which made the park look more inviting, I decided to take a picture.

Life’s not always a walk in the park but we just gotta roll with the punches and go with the flow.

4 – We celebrated Gokim’s birthday (as well as mine) at this Hunan cuisine restaurant that we’ve all never been to before. Since Gokim paid for our Christmas dinner last month, and they weren’t here for my birthday, it was now my turn to treat them. Personally, I liked the food. There were a lot of food choices although prices are a bit on the expensive side (in my opinion). Service was good and overall, it was a good experience!

Here comes the food post! Left to right, top to bottom – sauteed pork and sliced dried tofu (香干豬肉絲), steak cube and rice cake with pine nuts (松子年糕牛肉), Jumbo shrimp stick (棒棒蝦), Mao’s braised pork (毛家紅燒肉), Dong-An chicken (東安仔雞), sauteed cabbage Hunan style (湘西高麗菜), and black sesame milk with tapioca (黑芝麻椰汁西米露)

Waiting to get seated

Complete picture from Richelle :) Happy birthday Gokim! Too bad the pic’s blurry.

5 – For some reason, Richelle wanted to go for a jog and she asked me if I wanted to accompany her. Since I’ve also been eating a lot lately, I figured I needed to move and work up a sweat. I’ve been hormonal the past week too, because of my period and because I’m sick. Sooo, endorphins! We each had our own music players and earphones and we jogged/brisk walked at our own paces. Richelle used the Nike Running app, and I was also supposed to use that but it wanted me to login and it had a lot of steps and whatnots so I ended up just downloading something with less frills. According to that app, I jogged/brisk walked a total of 4.21 kilometers. I’m suuuper tired and my legs are aching. I’m sure they’re going to be sore tomorrow, yikes! It takes 1.32 kilometers from the park where we jogged/brisk walked to where I live so today’s exercise is a total of 5.53 kilometers. WOOHOO, it feels nice.

Five Things (January 12-18)

1. I was really surprised when I saw this in our mailbox because I totally wasn’t expecting it. My friends Enelyn and Lorraine sent me a card last December but I only got it now. We were surprised that it was able to get here in one piece. Hahaha! Ene even said she took a picture of the exterior and interior of the card just so she could have proof that they sent a card to me. #efriends

2. One of those rare nights that my manager and my other colleague (yes, there are only 3 of us in my current team) had to work overtime, so my manager treated us to dinner. Pizza Hut’s 7-cheese pizza. Look at those cream cheese balls! YUMMY.

3. One of my colleagues (from the import department) has this seat cushion from Nitori that is suuuper comfortable to sit on. At the end of the day, my butt hurts from sitting on our computer chairs and I’ve sat on this cushion a couple of times, and I found it to be reallyyy comfortable. I also asked her if her butt hurts after she gets off work, or at any time during the day, and she said no, which made me decide to buy one for myself. This cushion also claims to tone your butt and upper thigh muscles because of its firmness (?) but it did make my butt muscles feel sore last Friday. The more you sit on it though, the softer it becomes, so pretty soon (and hopefully) it doesn’t make my butt muscles feel sore anymore. Hahaha I don’t want to have to feel like I’m exercising when I’m at work although that’s not bad too.

4. Google Hangouts with my very good university friends Jad and Nicole. It’s pretty interesting because we are all in different countries – I’m in Taiwan (Taipei), Jad is in Spain (Madrid), and Nicole is in the Philippines (Manila). This was my Instagram caption –> Screenshot from Nic :) thank you so much for today! Really missed you girls. Glad to know that we’ve still managed to remain good friends throughout these years, and in the years to come, I’m sure of it.

This is part of Jad’s caption when she uploaded this yesterday –> You know college best friends are forever when you say “basta masaya ako sa buhok ko” (I’m happy with my hair) and they both say “kami din masaya sa buhok mo” (We’re also very happy for your hair/haircut). You know they are staying for keeps when one mentions her iPhone nonchalantly and the other two say “naka-iphone ka na?? Anong iphone??” (You’re using an iPhone?! Which one?!)… and when she answers, “6”, you give a round of applause na parang wala nang bukas (like there’s no tomorrow).

I replied saying, “in addition to what you wrote about knowing your friends are staying for keeps is when one can just say to the other, “wow matapobre ka na ah” (Wow you’re an elitist!) and know that she won’t be offended cos it wasn’t meant in a bad way. I called her an elitist because she said she couldn’t figure out how to use Android and that’s why she ended up getting an iPhone. HAHAHA!

5. Yummy and simple homemade brunch and a feeling of productivity from doing the laundry, cleaning my bed and my room, and fixing my things.