Graduation Day

Gaddamit! I fumbled out of my seat and tried my best not to trip over and look obvious that I was rushing to the side of the stage. It's hard to contain your emotions specially when you just heard (and found out for that matter) that your daughter got 2nd place overall at her school.

They took the special exams for forced ranking some 2 weeks ago, and we knew that she was running for a slot at the top 3 graduates. She has consitently been in the principal's list since 1st quarter, so it shouldn't have been any surprise to me. But I really didnt know how it felt like until I went through it... that is, to be called up on stage to pin an award on you daughter in front of the whole school, parents, teachers and classmates at PICC. And it was 2nd place.. overall the entire prep class of 39 graduates. Damn I am proud of her!

I was fucking smiling and smirking all through out the rest of the event. Nevermind that the whole thing was almost 3 hours long. Nevermind that it was almost 11:00 AM and I didnt have anything for breakfast. Nothing was gonna ruin my mood. I cant beleive there's so much raucus over this cheap piece of metal. But I had butterflies in my stomach nevertheless. It was awesome!

I only regret that my father never got to enjoy too much of this when I was a punk kid. In fact, I can remember only a few times that they had the chance to come up the stage and pin an award on me. And I must admit... as happy as I was walking up those steps, a sudden jolt of this made me realize what I deprived my parents of. But past is past, and I can no longer go back to kicking the shit out of everybody through my academe years. What I did manage to do, is outdo a lot of my peers in my batch by accomplish everything that I have done so far. When most of my peers are still climbing the corporate ladder to middle management, I have already been keeping the sit warm for several years now.

I recently took some time to look at several MBA programs and was extremely dissapointed with what I saw. All of the theses were either an evaluation, assesment, or analysis. Fuck that! I've done the actual implementations of these motherfuckers. I dont care how good your research was... you don't know until you actually roll your sleeves and implements something. That's when you really know if what you've been saying was dead accurate or if was just horse shit.

I dont remember how many times potential employers have asked me the question:

"I can see you've got experience, but bon't you think it's still a disadvantage for you to be gunning for a management role like this one at your young age?"

I always tell them:

"On the contrary, I think it's one of my biggest assets. How many people my age can do this job and do it well?"

Work stuff

I have updated all my project reports. Already submitted my billable hours for last week, and most of everything else that is pending won't be in till tomorrow.

I have this side project I'm supposed to complete this week. I need to to write a payroll program for a company and I am even too fucking bored to continue writing the codes. This kind of stuff will usually only take about 2 days if I just sit on it, but alas... it has now been 3 weeks and I have only completed probably about 30%. Who the hell looks forward to making data entry forms anyway? User Interface design is such a fucking crappy task!

[Listening to my playlist of Gypsy Kings just loop on and on for about 3 hours now]

I could probably go out, grab a few beers and go back after several hours or just shortly before my shift ends. But who do I go with? The rest of the people here arent privileged to do that.

Earlier, I just figured out that Mr. Know-it-all, who has always been yammering about his previous big projects... didn't know where the windows hosts file was. I mean... how the fuck do you go on handling servers and databases without knowing that? Probably been living off some of his guys who are more technical than him. But then, who gives a shit anyway? As long as he doesnt interfere with any of my deliverables... I can live with his ignorant ass just a cubicle away from me. I must admit though, his constant questions of what needs to be done next with his projects is starting to get annoying as well.

Some of the questions are so stupid like;

"Our boss is asking if we already have a contract for this project, what do I say?"

or

"How do I ask for an effort estimate from the teams?"

and even

"You think I should call the client about this?"

I understand that to some other IT guys, these might not come naturally but not for someone who is supposed to manage projects. In most cases, I have to actually coach him with what needs to be done next. They tell me that they hired him because of the tech and data analysis background... and not so much of the PM skills. The rationale was because he was mostly gonna handle internal projects. But now they are starting to trickle down external projects to him. So what now? Do I have to fucking mentor him? The break in I got from the existing PMs when I started here was very simple. Only about 3 weeks of giving me a head's up on how the PMO process works here, who the assholes and who the helpful ones are. And then I was on my own. So who died and made this guy a baby?

some thoughts before I head home...

Great breakfast! Soup #5. I dont really remember the last time I had this treat. For the uninitiated, its a soup topped with a bull's dick or balls. Chopped of course.

My daughter is in the run for the honor list and so she had to take the special exam for the final placement. Her teacher called the wife earlier and advised that she has been chosen to speak at her graduation next week at PICC. Nothing too fancy. A couple of lines before their class sings a medley. Still... I'm fucking excited!

The wife has also finally started reviewing for the NCLEX-RN. I had to trick her into going to the review center on the guise of "inquiring" just to force her to finally start this shit. After a short discussion with the registrar's assistant... I paid the tuition in full. That did it alright. No more excuses. Wouln't want to waste P21,000 if you're gonna ba all lazy about attending the lectures.

Hospitals and Doctors 101

Just came from my daughter’s Pediatrician… very relieved! We really had to get a second opinion from that jackass doctor from Medical City. Her school was asking for a med certificate for the graduation next month and since my daughter’s Pediatrician was abroad last week, we settled to get it from Medical City. I mean, why not right? It’s one of the biggest hospitals in the metro, and it’s very close to where we live.

After the workup, they told us that my daughter had Primary Complex, and was also probably positive for Diabetes. I was shocked! But I’ve never really easily trusted Doctors in my life, at least not the ones that I personally didn’t know. So after learning that her Pediatrician (who’s also her Ninang) has just arrived from the US, we went in for another workup. Lo and behold, she said the X-Ray results from Medical City shouldn’t cause any alarm, a second Urinalysis also cleared any possibilities of Diabetes. Besides being a bit thin, which has always been her problem for the past couple of years or so (mainly because of slow eating habits), she’s fine!

Of all the motherfucking... I have a very good mind to drive over on Monday and bring today’s lab results to Medical City and shove it down that bitch’s throat! I wish I could fucking kidnap her daughter (if she had one) and scare the shit out of her that I've just cut the child's index finger. Asshole!

And what is the fucking deal with the urinalysis and blood test results at Medical City taking 4-5 hours each anyway? I never remembered any of those taking that long. Our second workup here today only asked us to wait for 1 hour! And that fucking bitch from Medical City made us come back twice for some other “advice” and then billed us for "more" Consultation. Fucking Leech!

And so I end this blog with a stern warning... be wary of Doctors and Hospitals that are always cocked to rob you blind. They are as opportunistic as much as they appear to be very professional and reputable. I haven’t even started to speak about what happened several months ago when my Aunt was confined and died at Fatima Hospital due to a stroke. That my friends, deserve an entire blog altogether... but I’ll save that for another day lest I start hyperventilating.

Work in progress

I drew this for my daughter sometime ago, but I never got around to finishing it. Therefore technically, this is still work in progress. No, I did not use Illustrator, Freehand, nor CorelDraw... I only used the very crude MS Paint.

Ahhh.. another dream you say?

I've never really been a fan of perfumes or colognes. Right now, I have several which are mostly gifts from friends but I dont really use them that much. The ones that I do like are the Hugo Boss that's in a round bottle which smells really good, and another DKNY one. The rest I'm not that fond of. Now for some reason tonight before leaving for work, I decided to spray the DKNY on. And I really mean no special reason. But after I did, the wife suddenly interrogates me with why I am putting on perfume... with a hint of suggesting that I might have a mistress at work perhaps?

I dont know how sick and tired I am of hearing shit like this. The worst part is, she actually wants me to answer it. As a result, I purposely try to make faces like she caught my secret or something, but all within the context of making a joke of course. I mean, come on. If you had a mistress... would you tell your wife about it after a question like that? I mean what kind of answer do they really expect from their husbands?

"Actually, Yes. And it's been going on for 6 months"

Now I have already told her about how ridiculous that question is countless times already, specially more absurd since she actually demands a straight answer from me. Why the hell do women need constant reassurance? After being constantly asked about this all these 7 years of blissfull marriage... it's easy to imagine how it can be so tiresome that it's actually annoying. It feels like a fucking gnat at a BBQ. You fucking swat it away several times, and it just wont go away. Pestering you constantly even as you exert the effort to shoo it away. It's like a stubborn turd... a floater that wont go down. Why dont you just sink you little fucker?!

She even chased me down the stairs and out of the door when I refused to answer.

"What the??"

All because last night she told me about a dream she had. She dreamt she went to the office to pick me up, and saw me holding hands with another girl. Now there are a lot of things that are absolutely wrong with this dream to begin with. First of all, she never drives. One of the main reasons we bought another car (automatic transmission) is that so she can easily drive around the metro since she has been having difficulties with the stick shift. That proved to be a wrong assumption. She never drives, period. Second is, if I had a mistress... why the fuck would I shit in my own backyard? And what? Date a co-employee? What am I stupid? I may get crazy sometimes, but I'm definitely not stupid!

Dreams are really such powerful shit. I know a friend who got laid because the girl dreamt about him. And she didn't even had a crush on him before that. Talk about being a lucky SOB!

Dreams are also pretty biased. Specially when you're a married guy. I dont recall her telling me she dreamt about me being the loving and caring guy that I am. OK, maybe I dont really want something that far-fetched. Just enough positive vibe so she lets me out with the boys all night. I can live with that.