Wednesday, June 26, 2013

conversations




at the newly opened Joy Avenue Foodstore:

little girl was lingering while there were no customers.  my brother's kumpare was there, who incidentally has the same family name as ours so the hubby calls him 'insan (meaning: cousin).

'insan came over the softdrinks fridge, calling out 'nay pahingi ako ng royal. (<-softdrinks font="">

bayaran mo yan ha, said the little girl.  so she thought, by saying "pahingi" the guy was literally asking for it for free.

ayoko nga bayaran.  bakit ko babayaran e pinsan ako ng may-ari?

e ako nga anak ako ng may-ari nagbabayad ako e.

ayoko pa rin bayaran, 'insan taunted her, laughing as he said this.

the little girl, obviously pissed, retorted, ta-taekwondohin na kita.  marunong ako mag-taekwondo.  lumalaban ako ng lalaki, tumatalo ako ng lalaki.

to which 'insan and everybody within earshot started laughing.  and usually, when she's laughed at, the little girl gets really annoyed. she said, naiinis na ko sa yo.  iiyak na ko! then  broke down in tears.


Friday, June 14, 2013

New Year



Oh yeah, I was supposed to blog about a few things....


It's a New Year in different ways for me so let me run down those "few" things I wanted to blog about for the last 3 months that I was in hiatus from this blog.


New school year.  The little big man, who is 10 years old, is now in 6th grade.  Schoolyear 2013-2014.  Can you believe that?  I must change the picture on the top of this blog soon.  That was so 5 years ago.  (I guess)  And the little girl, who is 7 years old, is in 2nd grade.


CPU and external hard drive are dead.  Yes, 2 weeks ago, my Seagate 500gig external hard drive containing most of my family pictures for the last 8 years, just went kaput.  And just this weekend, our family's personal computer crashed.  I need to start over.  I don't need to tell you how devastated I am about all that I've literally lost.  I did not shed tears but you can imagine my insides falling apart piece by piece as the computer tech told me that none of my data stored in all of that can be retrieved.  


Back  to old coach.  The little big man started training again with his former taekwondo coach.  Yeah, the one who disowned him some 2 years ago.  We've been wanting to communicate with him for the past year and the few times we've connected in some tournaments, he was friendly enough for us to eventually tell him that we wanted our little girl to start training with him.  And then he asked, what about the little big man?  So we took it as an invitation for us to come back and train with him again.  And we did.  There's no turning back.  So last May, both kids went into rigid 4 times a week training with him.  

Home-grown.  In connection with that training, the little girl , after training for about 3 weeks, went into her first official tournament, albeit a mini-tournament.  It was so mini that she did not have an opponent in her category who is a girl.  So, the organizers pitted her against boys.  Yes, she sparred with 2 boys within her height range.  And she won over both. Her first official gold medal in taekwondo has been sealed.

New business.  So after all the ups and downs of the previous year, the parents helped hubby and I put back together the canteen.  It's now located in our own yard converted into a cozy enough, decent enough canteen for students and for the neighborhood.  We called it Joy Avenue Foodstore, derived from our street name, Ligaya Street.  


Work-related.  Last December, the office renovation got semi-completed and my department was moved back up to the 2nd floor.  My new place is right in front of the door leading to the warehouse.  Last April, my Chinese friend and supplier noticed I'd been sickly the last couple of months.  I told her it was probably because of the crazy schizophrenic weather and that I was seated in front of the door that pushes in warm air everytime it opens and closes.  To this, she was appalled.  She said, in Feng Shui, it is bad luck to be working right in front of a door because the negative energy is right at you.  Aside from that, my back was towards the door so I could be prone to back-stabbing, literally and figuratively.  For this, I requested my bosses if we could have a wall put behind me to block the door, to which they immediately said yes.  But to this day, 2 months later, still nada.  

Still work-related but on the side.  I tried to revive SALT last February but my full-time job just keeps me too busy and tired.  So after a few successes for 2 months, I am lying low on this biz again.  My time will come.

Babies.  My younger brother has a new baby.  Cheska was born last March.  My PD Officer Jacq is pregnant and is due in late July or early August.  Her baby's name is gonna be Yuri.


I know I have a lot more to update but this will be all for now.  I will try my best to blog often so I won't forget.