GH-049.jpg

GH-049.jpg,
uploaded by
Gryphon Hall.

Moblog:

GH-046.jpg

GH-046.jpg,
uploaded by
Gryphon Hall.

Moblog: My niece, currently being dedicated in God's presence.

Dad's new PC

Dad's new brand-name Desktop PC, w/c he bought out of need, not just his but mine as well. He financed it, but I did the research. All this, including all peripherals, the table and chair was had for just P28K. Next week, we will already have DSL.

What do you think?

As you can see, the brand is Red Fox... but that's not as important as the one-year warranty that comes along with it; because it is brand-name, the warranty is good. The hardware itself is also good: a nice AMD Sempron with really high quality speakers, keyboard and optical mouse... terno pa! O, 'di ba?

Hopefully, when the PLDT guys come around, they can install DSL quick... Dad will be happy with his download speeds, I can research stuff I need for work and, most importantly, I can chat with my wife, Ærynn, again. It has been too long since we had a long, meaningful chat. Because of my job, I couldn't even visit my Mom-in-law, where she usually finds a way for me to speak with my wife... it has been a lonely existence.

Click here to see the full specifications of the Red Fox Vengeance SE Basic. The only difference is that this package has one CD-ROM drive, one DVD-RW drive, two hard disks (one is 40GB, the other is 80GB), and 256MB of DDR RAM.

Anyway, I hope this snazzy, red computer will mean that our hearts will burn bright again...

I've become fat again, part 2

I just watched a special on TV about why diet plans fail. They mentioned three factors (or at least, I was able to absorb three factors):

1. When everybody else is eating a lot, dieters tend to much more.
2. When dieters binge on one meal, they usually throw off the entire day (or week) while promising themselves that they can start over next week.
3. When dieters are stressed, they usually will eat more to feel better.

From what I know, number 1 and 2 applies to me. I know I've been working hard to shed the extra fat by watching what I eat. But when others around me are eating liempo and lechon kawali, it is true, I tend to eat what they eat. I have, of course, been taunted a lot about the lack of discipline I have if I cannot say "no" to eating what others eat, but the TV program has assured me that this was unfair at the very least. For one thing, eating is a social act. It becomes unnatural to eat differently from others, even if they expect you to. That is why a family of thin people tend to be a family of thin people, and vice versa. Fat friends congregate with each other, and vice versa. If everybody else is eating healthy, the tendency is for one to eat healthy. That's why people in Japan or other health-conscious cultures tend to stay healthy even if they eat a lot, while cultures like that in the USA or even in the Philippines tend to have obese people, even if they diet and eat little. As I said in my previous mobile post (I actually posted that using my cellphone; I finally found a system that works), when the "meriendas" are not only scheduled and regulated, but when the only food that is served are oily and saucy foods, there is no other recourse but to stay away from the pantry except during the lunch hour.

Oh, and about stress... we've got a lot of that. I've always told others that the reason why I don't become a pastor is because, among other things, I can't see myself making a sermon once a week. It is just too hard. Now that I'm training for a call center job, the ACE training (Accent and Conversational English Training) that happens nine hours a day, stopping only for merienda and lunch, has us needing to speak out more than once a day and writing our "reports" and "presentations." This is stressful, to say the least, and trainees congregating to eat that delish concoction of beef, peppers, mushrooms in thick gravy seems to be a way to relieve some of the stress.

One other source of stress for me is the decidedly nonChristian atmosphere of the workplace. I am not saying that the place is decidedly "evil"—it is not. It is just nonChristian: we men unashamedly make remarks about the body parts of the female trainees and talk about the ones we like, for instance. I say "we" because even if, frankly, I don't find myself attracted to any of the females there, in order to fit in I have to find something to like in the females around. I have thus far "appreciated" only the "safer" aspects of the females: good dresser, good speaker, pretty, etc. but I have already crossed the line twice when I agreed that one girl's "ass was hot" and that another girl's "feet was sexy." It is also uncomfortable when the females themselves, most of them married and/or having children of their own are also engaging in a little "innocent" flirting. I guess I am just too conservative... but still, I don't see the logic in all of this behavior. A single co-trainee cannot get the eye of the females, no matter how much he preens and all; yet we married guys get the attention primarily because we are "safe" (I will deal with this reprehensible illogic in a later post). Even the married women are more brazen than the single women.

Anyway, my point is that this adds to my stress, making the already scrumptuous food even tastier to my palate; and I must do everything in my power to try and avoid it. Ærynn deserves to have the same fit husband she married months ago when I see her again, not some fat whale.

I've become fat again

GH-024.jpg,
originally uploaded by Gryphon Hall.

Moblog post: I have gotten fat again. After months of being just over 200lbs, I have experienced becoming almost 30lbs heavier in just a month. My belt has become tighter again after months of being too large. There was this shirt that I wore last month that showed that I was begining to have a neck again; I am wearing it again tonight, and there is on neck in the mirror now. It is, of course, needless to say that this is not good.

I've seen that there are several reasons for this sudden weight gain. First, I have not been getting much sleep since this new night-shift job. Of course, I've only been at it a week, but this shirt I am now wearing that is suddenly tight I wore just last week, and it didn't "stick" onto me this way. So, second, I think it is because of the instituted meriendas at work. You see, I don't eat merienda. Now that it is a tangible break & everybody is eating, I've been eating as well.

Well, not anymore. I have to be more disciplined if I am to avert all the damage to all the hard work for the last few months. I will again need to watch more closely my food intake, since I am no longer in Cavite and exercise will no longer be there just for the taking. More later.

Thinking Aloud: A Gripe Observed, part I

I am very perturbed. And, supposedly, I have no reason to be. . .

. . . Or rather, it's all in the way one looks at it, to see whether I have any real reason to be perturbed.

I almost wrote down "I married the most wonderful lady I've ever met, but I can't be with her" but I know just how sappy, clichéd, and generally annoying such statements are to those who have never been in the sort of situation I am in. I have married a wonderful lady. I have only spent a maximum of three weeks together with her. I had expected to be with her by next month. But, thanks to the cruel twists that can come, our reunion is going to be delayed, at best, and denied, at worst. Of course, "denied" is such a strong word. More properly, I would probably follow her much, much later than I thought; more like the two years apart that a friend of ours had to go through, when she was waiting to get her husband to the States.

All this "misery" is due to some misplaced good fortune.

You see, I have for some reason finally acquired a job that pays well. Good fortune indeed, except that it has come more than two years too late. Those who are truly familiar with the Job Market in the Philippines—and I'm not talking about those ten or twenty percent that get jobs on the get go and keep them for around 5 years; no, I'm talking about the majority of us out there—know that getting a job is like playing a game. So often, I have walked up to a snazzy building, freshly bathed, freshly shaved, with a fresh haircut and a fresh layer of dust that the metropolitan pollution has dumped on me, trying to feel confident. More often than I want to remember, I would ace their applications tests and exams, up until the final interview. How many times have I shaken a vigorous and eager hand just as the interview starts, then they take one good look at my resumé, see where I got my degree, see how many "jobs" I've been in, and see how short my durations were, and I get to shake that same hand that is now placid and uneager? I hate it when people try to broadcast the lie that companies here in the Philipppines do not discriminate against the "lesser" universities. They have accused me, and others, of just not trying hard enough. But they all want graduates from UP, DLSU, Ateneo, probably UST. . . they do!

Of course graduates from the "other" universities get jobs. Just not the jobs that one wants or was trained for. I have often found myself glossed over by these companies, even when I had the skills, and they choose someone who would later purchase those "Learn in 24 hours..." kind of books because they had to cram up on the skills. Our difference? He graduated from the Philippine version of an ivy-league university. So much so that most of my former classmates, even those that finished cum laude, can only find jobs as clerks, while less skilled and less smart rich kids get to ride around in business suits.

As a result, my resumé has become a joke. Only those small, no-name companies ever hired me, making my work experience even more pathetic.


Yet, I now find myself with a good paying job with a good multi-national company. I should be overjoyed. I am not. I definitely need the money. But I should have had this job two years ago, not now when I am about to leave. I credit the fact that Canadians were the ones who interviewed and hired me as the reason why I was able to get in, when so many times in the past I was turned away. To a Canadian PCU is the same as UP, and I got my chance.

I don't care about demographics, you know, that "fact" that they are parading around in the Philippines that usually, UP/DLSU/Ateneo/etc. graduates are the better and smarter workers. That only became so because these universities take all the best high school graduates, not because on any inherent superiority in their systems. And even so, if you treat a potential student as, well, the lower rungs, they will behave so. I have met a lot of really smart and industrious individuals in my college that have since turned to mediocrity, merely because that was what was expected of them.

Still, I have this job. A "call centre" job. A job which, years ago, I would not have touched with a ten-foot pole. It wasn't what I was trained for. It isn't what I want. I will receive calls and try to solve technical problems. We aren't allowed a lot of freedoms. The work is hectic and demanding, with long hours during the oddest hours of the day. The job, itself, is not very fulfilling. But it pays well, and over the course of a few years the need for money has stifled my idealism. Like in the Thomas Hardy novel of "Jude the Obscure" where Jude with aspirations to become a scholar and skills in Latin and Hebrew still cannot rise above the station in life that society drops on his shoulders, I have come to accept that maybe I will never be a writer. There will never be any time. I need money. This is it. This is all I will ever be accepted for. To hope for more is to always despair. To start accepting my station is, hopefully, the start of happiness for me. A mere customer service agent, probably someday a trainer. But that is it.

Oh, there are benefits upon benefits. The starting pay is good. There is insurance. And quiet rooms, showers, game rooms, free coffee. . . why did I ever aspire to anything more than this? I had always hated the corporate atmosphere. . . I should have accepted that it will be what feeds me. Yet, this lesson comes too late. If I had learned this two years ago and had, back then, sold myself to wage-slavery, my wife wouldn't have needed to leave. I should still have her here, and we could have been married earlier, have had kids earlier. . . a man's lot. I had been too proud, and loneliness has been my punishment.

I want to be with my wife now in Australia. But I cannot leave, now that I have a good company that accepted me. I need to stay at least until October, probably November. . . but I want to be with my wife. But I can only allow her to really live and pursue her dreams if I can provide. This job will help me. I need it.

But I am not happy.


I am perturbed. My team-mates are very much like the high school students I used to teach: loud, arrogant, self-absorbed and self-interested. Yet, this is the world that I must belong in, this world full of the loud and arrogant. Should I also be loud and arrogant to succeed? I hope not. But, now, I must prepare for work: do my job to sell myself and make myself as interesting a human product as I can, so I can ascend the ladder and make more money. What is more important than money? I cannot see beyond the flimsy walls of my workstation to know for sure, but this I know now: with money comes happiness.

And only fools and poets think otherwise and die hungry and lonely.