It's so ironic that I started the day with a big smile on my face and ended it with the most bitter frown I ever had in my whole life.

As I read the e-mail from my Phoenix counterpart, my heart leapt in joy since she acknowledged my work that I sent her the night before. It is very seldom in my life that someone praises me like that. That already boosted me up as I worked through the day.

I was hopefully waiting for the lunchtime to be over since it would be the time to get our salary increase letters. I asked my seatmate to go with me downstairs and we both got our salary letters. However, to my dismay, I found out that my salary for the entire fiscal year will remain unchanged! OUCH, that really hurted me. After all the pains and pressures and sleepless nights I was deprived of the opportunity to be appreciated with all the work I've done for the past year. :( I just smiled at my teammates and pretended that I am semi-contented with the amount of my salary increase.

But as I was to go out of the office, I approached my manager and asked her what happened to my salary increase. She explained it to me and that really made me upset. For once again, just like last year, I was cheated by my assessor. It's another sort of powertripping and maliscious misjudgment. Why should I always be a victim of that? Ever since in elementary school I had been always cheated by people claiming to be experts in evaluating me. I just can't stand the hypocrisy of putting someone up over me and dumping so many boo-boos in my part. As my manager enumerated to me the not so few improvement points as enlisted by my assessor, I just could't help but smirk at her. Although I still managed to keep my composure and I was able to end the conversation with her with a smile.

With what happened to me that day, I firmly made my decision not to stay in the firm longer as my contract elapses 7 months from now. I'll just be counting the days!

To those people who always underestimate me... Good job! But I'm still not impressed.

August 19, 2003 (Tuesday)
I am all alone here in the office. I decided to stay late since I still have many things to do yet I wasn't able to finish all of them. I don't know why, but I am not feeling tired even though I had just too little sleep last night. The stress brought about by last night's exam and the pressures of office work seems to be resisted by my systems today. Well, that's a good one for me but I don't know if this will prevail until tomorrow. I think I'll be needing more overtimes in the office since ther is always loads of tasks that need to be done. Not mentioning my school works that are already past due. Oh my, where would I get all the time, strength and guts to face my overdue school tasks?? I am already ashamed to my CS220 professor since I intentionally got myself late to last night's exam since it was only during my ride to the school when I had most of my reviewing time. Actually, it was even diminished since I have to take a nap while inside the bus because I felt dizzy while I was on the way. May be it was due to my lack of sleep last Sunday.

Well, for now I took all my guts and swallowed all my pride as I send AJ and e-mail telling him that I already seen his web pages in his Japanese university's webpage. I am not expecting any reply from him but I put a return receipt on my e-mail. If he replies to it, the better.

Ok, I'm really going home this time. It's not getting any early anymore. I have to be in the office tomorrow by 8:00 am.

August 17, 2003 (Sunday)
I am still here in one of my cramming sessions. Today, I have three things to finish. First was my excel spreadsheet to be sent to my Phoenix counterpart. It was already due last Friday but I can not afford to make it on schedule but not on the quality. For me to do that deliverable, I need to do more research on the modules I was assigned at work and that would definitely be eating significant amount of time.

Next is my cs220 paper which was about past a week due. I am no longer sure if my professor will accept it if I submit it today but I hope that he will. I don't know why, for me everything has its right time. And for this paper-it seems that it hasn't reached its proper time for me to complete it. (Oh, how miserable!)

Lastly is my first exam in my programming languages class. I'll admit to myself that I fear to fail this subject but I'll just make a try with its first exam first before deciding whether or not I would drop it. I just started working on all these three last night and I knew very much that I would be lacking time to finish working on all of them. I quickly had the brainstorming inside my mind and I resorted to give up my Baguio trip this coming weekend. Friday this week is a holiday and we intend to leave for Baguio in that day. I will be sacrificing it since I will take my off today instead of having it on Friday. This will result for me working in the office this Friday instead of enjoying myself in Baguio. Giving the trip up didn't took me a hard time. I just thought of my tutorial session at the weekend and that we'll be having our group report next week so I must be in school next week to meet my classmates.

Having a very boring time in front of the pc at wee hours of the morning, I had tried to search for my best friend's name in the internet. This time I gpt a new URL which leads to him. It was his very first website... school website for that matter. It was in his school's Makino lab. There he gave a brief overview of the paper he is currently working on with. He's now working on computer graphics with the use of photon imaging, if I'm not mistaken. On on part of the page he had his acknowledgments though I didn't find my name included in the list of his gratuity. Of course, I am not expecting my name to be there... however,it would be a moral booster for me if it happened that I saw it there.

I explored his site and found out that he's doing well in school. I admired him a bit more since I think he has been very serious with his graduate study there unlike me who is trying to find some time out of my busy work schedule just to browse through my notes when the exam time is coming. But I am wondering why I still got so many time to go to the mall or to the bowling house to spend time with friends during weekends? I know I really need time to unwind but when it come to my time for my study, I couldn't find enough.

Time management as they may say, but as of now I got to stressed out with the daily work and school routines. I just consider my tutorial session and bowling games a part of keeping myself sane despite of my super-hectic schedule. This seems to be a perrenial trouble for me, cramming up for my school papers and exams but up to now, I haven't really trained myself to practice time management properly. It's just like that whenever I've already planned my time for the day or for the week, something will just come up and wreck my already planned tasks. I think I've been always having this contingency budget burned for unexpected events. I do not want to drop or flank any subject in my masters since it'll not just be an eyesore in my transcript, but also it'll appear as a lost of investment since I pay my own tuition.

Oh no, I hope this time management problem of mine gets resolved as soon as possible... before it's too late.

note: i don't know what happened to my keyboard but some characters don't jive with the shift key... so i'll just have my blog in lower case.

august 11, 2003 (monday)
i took an afternoon off from the office since i need to go to the japanese embassy for the japanese language exam. the exam was bloody difficult-i couldn't even answer the basic part easily. i must admit that it was the very first exam where i felt a headache-maybe due to the pressure of taking the exam itself. i just did guessing for the intermediate and advanced portions of the exam. but in myself i saw my determination in taking that language exam since i found myself carefully reading each item in the exam and translated them one-by-one into their romanized equivalents. nice thing was my monday class was cancelled eventhough i skipped it due to the trouble i had with the japanese language exam.

august 12, 2003 (tuesday)
the first text message i got from my cellphone was a note from rose santos telling me that her grandma passed away. the way she informed me was quite unique: "pinagpahinga na nanay ko..." 'nanay' is the term she used to identify her grandma. i was slightly moved by her message. it seems like she was so calm with her choice of words. she was asking me if i can drop by their place for the wake. i wasn;t sure at first if i can make it since i would be in the office for the rest of the day and i would be attending my evening class afterwards. and their place was quite discouraging me to go... it was in san mateo rizal, a place too far for me to venture. i asked rey if he could go with me to the wake. at least having rey go with me makes me feel a bit safer rather than going there alone. nice thing he agreed and by then i made the decision to finally go to the wake. while at office i sent messages to our friends asking them if they could go with us to the wake. lannie responded first. she expressed to me her intention to go with us but she would be needing first her mom's consent. next who responded was joanne. i asked her to be in philcoa at about 7:30 pm or 8:00 pm so we will be meeting rey there and we will just get a ride to a jeepney which would be easily accessible from there.

my work at the office seemed to be a bit demanding. i even skipped my class just to finish my tasks for the day. good thing, it would just be my fourth absence for my tuesday class. my instructor already warned me that i should not exceed six absences or else, she will dropped me from the course. i know that i must leave the office by about 7:00 pm the latest to make it to philcoa by 8:00 pm. but unfortunately, i was just about to leave the office by about nearly 9:00 pm. i arrived philcoa at about 9:45 pm and rey and joanne were already bored waiting for me for almost 2 hours. i was really ashamed for coming late but deep inside me i couldn't do anything at that time to make me reach the meeting place any earlier than the time i arrived. we waited for almost 20 minutes more for rose who happened to have a tutorial session at the same night so we were a bunch of 4 when we went to the wake.

august 13, 2003 (wednesday)
actually, i had no plans of staying later than midnight at the wake. i still have my term paper to finish at home which was about 2 days past the extended deadline. i also have, of course, my wednesday office work which needs me to be in office by eight. but when we were already there, rose's relatives thought we were there to accompany rose overnight so they went to their home to take their sleep. (the wake was in the chapel.) i was urging rey and joanne to leave the place by 1:00 am and joanne also has to go with her classmate's place to do group study session for their upcoming saturday exam. the thing was it was already late for us to bid our goodbyes, rose would be alone if we would be needing her. so to cut the long story short. we just left the place at about quarter to six. we three: joanne, rey and i, took a bus to ortigas then the mrt to baclaran. there we looked for a long sleeved shirt for me to wear in the office. we went to joanne's place afterwards and rey ironed my newly bought white long sleeved shirt. i even missed my morning bath and toilet rituals because i lacked time and resources so i just proceeded to the office afterwards.

i was really feeling sleepy during the rest of the day while at work. good thing was, my work for the day wasn't that really demanding so i was able to take very short naps in between the office hours. at the afternoon, i felt that i already regained my strength so i felt like i was still on the go to finish the day's workload. i left the office just on time to catch up my lost sleeping hours once i got home. however, rey asked me if he can use my pc at home to type his trigonometric manuscripts which he would be needing for the next day. rey let me wait for him for about to hours so i felt i wasted those two hours for sleep. it was already 4:00 am when he finish his typesetting and we left home at about 7:00 am.

august 14, 2003 (thursday)
that was thursday and i stayed late at the office to compensate my tardiness and missed office hours during the week. roselle asked me to meet her and joanne at sm megamall to watch 'the league'. i personally didn't like the movie. i came a little later than the start of the movie's last full show so i just invited the two to play bowling. i arrived home at about 2:00 am.

august 15, 2003 (friday)
i was given many tasks during the day and i left office a little late to make it to the movie to be shown at the UP film center. i already convinced rey to got with me to the film showing but it appeared that both of us came late and we lost the chance to watch the movie. i had trouble while riding the mrt because it had a technical problem and rey, on the other hand, needed to finish an errand before he was allowed to leave home.

while i was on my way to UP, the tutorial center where i was working part-time informed me that my tutee was waiting for me that night. i didn't get it because we already agreed to have our tutorial sessions every saturdays. but since i was already in UP, which was just near my tutees' home, i decided to have the session at that night. rey, who also happened to be a tutor in the center, accompanied me to my tutee's home. we started 9:00 pm and ended at 11:00 pm-too late for a tutorial session but i was relieved because my tutee learned well and fast. while in the bus on our way home, as i was talking to rey, i had a quick image of aj on my mind. i didn't know why. maybe i just missed him at that moment or could it be that something bad happened to him? oh, i would rather have him mised instead of him having something bad. i just told rey that i was missing aj. rey told me that maybe it was alright since it was been it was been a long time since aj left for japan-about 10 months now.

rey went home with me. we watched 'meteor garden season 2' episode 2 then he left with my smallville vcd's which he borrowed.

august 16, 2003 (saturday)
it was my sister's birthday and i woke up at abot 11:30 am-the time i need to leave home to make it on time at my 1:00 pm saturday class. i just feel lazy and lax so i just left home at about 2:00 pm-i would be just catching the last 30 minutes of the class but i would still be able to sign the class attendance. that was the only reason why i would be attending the day's class-there would be an incentive for few absences and i haven't occurred any. after class i proceeded to sm to meet joanne and friends to have our saturday gimmick. there were joanne, michael, jobert, christine and janice-most of them were met by me just at that time,again after a long time. we had bowling and videoke afterwards. it was already early in the morning (about 2:00 am) when i arrived home.

Welcome to my Journal! It's been quite long since I've wanted a journal online and good thing O saw this blog service in Angelfire. I really like writing stuffs and this is a good venue to post my thoughts. I would like to post articles almost everyday. I wish many people could take some time to read my articles and to post their opinions as well. Of course, not all the time people will agree to what I would be saying so I hope this online journal would become a very exciting site for me to visit regularly.

Thanks,
Eric