June 04, 2005

I try to play the guitar once in a blue moon. I suck at it. In fact, I don't even know how to tune! But thanks to this application for solving my problem and inspiring me to play more. For those of you who are tone-deaf like me, don't hesitate to download the Guitar Tuner from FlyerOne. Download the .sis file and send it to your Series 60 phone via bluetooth or infrared. Worked excellent on my acoustic gee.

June 02, 2005

I'm providing mostly night tutorial classes right now. My nocturnal self is out and happy again. I'm pretty serious on doing a good job. I think I have the motivation and drive I so lacked before with work. I have learned to quantify and qualify my goals - without such, I would refuse to do any kind of work at all. I would find fault in every company I work for, every job I hold. Not good. 

Still it's not all rainbows and butterflies. I got to decide soon and stand by my decision: helpdesk support or ESL tutor? I'm kind of actually caught between a rock and a hard place. There's pro's and cons which I'm going to discuss on a later date.  

June 01, 2005

For people running WinXP SP2, who installed security update MS05-012, you guys might be getting the same error as I do on startup: Generic Host Process for Win32 Services encountered a problem and needed to close. Go here to get the fix.

May 26, 2005

I feel a profound sense of sorrow whenever I remember the memories of Tita. She had lost her long battle with diabetes two months ago. She is terribly missed. Her passing pains me greatly because not only have I gotten to know her for a while but I've gotten to know many of the people she left behind, and I feel their loss. Tito was a very devoted husband, and their were children very loving and dedicated to her as well, always by her side, laughing, singing, talking, praying, watching TV, just always spending time with her. Whenever it dawns on me that she's gone, I can't believe it's still bittersweet. Sad that she's no longer around but comforting to know she's in better, peaceful place in heaven. She was a great woman.

Here is what Veen wrote about her mom.

May 25, 2005

I met with an Arabian national tonight. He turned out to be a diplomat. He was interested in rendering English language tutorial, sub-category: vocabulary and pronunciation. It's excellent that I will be able to share what I learned from my accent  reduction trainings from the previous call centers I worked on. But I still want to stress that it's OK to have AN ACCENT (that is not American) because we- are not Americans! We weren't born and raised in America, and English wasn't our mother tongue. Ergo, it is understandable that our speech is laced with regional accents, Arabic accent, Korean, etc. But why do people still want to improve word inflection aside from basic grammar and sentence structure? Three points. First, communication with others would be difficult. People won't understand you if you don't enunciate well. Your meaning changes when you say words differently, e.g. virgin vs. version. You do not exclaim, "I like that virgin better!" when you really mean you like that version better. Second, how can you apply for a 14-19k basic salary in a call center? Ah. You don't want your customers insisting for thirty minutes you're from India, which is fine if you're Indian but you're really not, you're just from an island from the southern part of the archipelago for crying out loud. No offense to southern peeps btw. They speak excellent English. I just didn't want to offend our Bombay friends. Third, I would be out of a job. So there. 

May 24, 2005

Finally. My Roxio burning software worked! After an OS restoration, a clean XPSP2 installation, and a reinstallation and repair of WinOnCD, it worked. Successfully burned long overdue audio with no skips.

May 23, 2005

I am currently reading The Heavenly Man. This wonderful book was recommended  to me by Tito Jun. It took me a while to get started into reading the paperback because its thick spine intimidated me. But now that I started plowing through it, I couldn't put the it down. The crux of the book was the author's missionary work in China. He was one of the first leaders who persevered in spreading Christianity despite government opposition and persecution in the communist country.

May 22, 2005

Family Reunion of the De Guzman clan in Candaba. Every year on this date that my matriarchal grandparents' celebrated their wedding, we, the grandchildren and our parents and uncles and aunts get together to eat, play, sing, and generally just to catch up on things. But mostly an afternoon of sitting around. Little fun for the fellas who grew up on another part of the region and never really got to know these blood kin. Really haven't seen these relatives of mine for at least a few years so it was difficult for me to even recognize some of the young cousins and little nieces and nephews who are now mostly grown-ups. What can I say, a quick trip to get some farm fresh air and a quicker trip back.

May 21, 2005

So now I want to work part-time as a tech support specialist and part-time language consultant. Even whipped out a business card. Yeah who knows what I'm going to do next. I'm kind of like the Liberal Arts major who shifted to International Studies. I spell c-o-n-f-u-s-e-d. I badly need to know what my parachute color is. 

May 20, 2005

Laid some finishing touches with the sections. Was able to kill two of the three geocities ad-squares, also. Took all night for us to research and figure it out. If anybody knows how to beat the expense of FREE hosting and totally get rid of those nasty banners, please tag me. 

May 19, 2005

Pretty excited with my newly arranged layout. As always, I relied on The Webmaster's expertise to lash it up. Thanks much, Veen! Flaunting some decent changes: the photo gallery upfront, a wider rants section - now occupying two frames, the 'about me' portion - now part of the four-image navigation on top. Got rid of the music section in place of a link back to 'blog home'. Fantastic. Time to update!