I am a night owl, and my favorite drink is Schlurp! :) Yummy! I found it in 7 Eleven during a midnight snack run, and I simply love the taste.

It actually tastes like tea. That’s what I love. Most of the commercial products of iced tea pale in comparison to this one. Nestea, C2, Real Leaf Tea – they are simply sweetened and flavored water. Schlurp tastes like tea! Ok maybe I am not being fair, the brands I mentioned aren’t exactly known for milk teas, just regular iced tea. But the fact is, the milk and jellies part of Schlurp is just a bonus for me. The selling part is really the strong flavor of tea. So yay for bottled tea I can buy in bulk and store at home to drink at my leisure! :) :) :)

Oh and did I mention no preservatives, and barely sweetened? The ingredients read: Purified water, premium brewed Earl Grey tea, low fat non dairy creamer, brown sugar and jellies. Wow!!! No high fructose corn syrup here! No aspartame! Wowww, no wonder it tastes so good. You could even try your hand making it at home with such a simple list of ingredients. :)

This is starting to sound like I am being paid for writing about this tea. LOL. I am not. Just happy I finally have a suitable replacement for my pop soda addiction. I just found out Diet Coke (and any kind of carbonated drink) gives me stomach ulcers. So this is a really lucky find for me.

I hope Schlurp branches out soon. Right now I’ve only found it in 7 Eleven and not in any major grocery. Good thing I have a 7 Eleven right beside me office. :)

Schlurp Your Tea!

My favorite store in the mall nearest my place is Handyman Home Center. They sell all kinds of stuff, from tables to stoves to shower curtains. The other day, they were having a ginormous sale, and Gim and I had such a fun time picking out stuff!

Gim got a flat iron at 50% off. Hardly any of my clothes need to be pressed, so I never got around to buying one. However, most of his wardrobe are polos and slacks. His work is more casual, but he dresses fancier. LOL. In the three weeks that he’s been working, he’s already had dinners in Shangri-La and symposiums at St Luke’s. AND he got two credit cards by merely possessing a PRC card!!! Plus, he’s been recently offered a free out-of-town trip to Laoag for a conference (though he had to turn it down due to a prior commitment). I’m so green with jealousy!! In two years I’ve worked with my company, there’s never been any free travel. Shucks. What job should I switch to that’s high-paying, stress-free, and has about 30% travel?? Or is there no such job in IT? :P

Anyway, I got a bottle of scented reed. It’s lavender, and only a hundred pesos. It smells great, but after a week, the scented oil is half gone. Aw. Evaporates fast.

I also got a shoe rack, finally! Only three hundred pesos. I hate a messy floor, and Gim hates a messy room. (The bonus of having him here is he keeps my room clean all the time, hihihi!)

I also got a corner table with four tiers, which I love since I have a lot of stuff, so now I have a place for books and additional things. Since my other divider is already full with knickknacks.

What else did I get? Oh, I was eyeing a stool, too. Though with my recent purchase of a sofa (at the new Home Depot here in Makati), there’s really so little room left, so maybe I’ll hold on that. :P

So much fun buying things for the home. I hope someday I finally get my own house so I can decorate even more. :)

I need to find some creatine reviews. Can creatine increase my brain power? Isn’t the brain a muscle? LOL. My doctor boyfriend will kill me for being so clueless. :)

Truthfully, HP work is really grueling. I feel like my mind is puddles right now. Like literally it is melting in my head with all the pressure to complete things and push people to do things and take accountability for everything… I don’t know how long I can last. Sometimes I get 10 emails within 5 minutes. As I always say, my favorite button is the delete button.

Tomorrow I have a whole-day meeting with people who are interested in the exact opposite of what I am interested in. They’re the movers, I’m the control. It’s gonna be frustrating, I can tell.

Sometimes, pasting a smile on my face takes a lot more effort than you think.

I need a long vacation.

I am not fond of all those FourSquare updates or tweets. I don’t use FourSquare and I cringe for those who do. I feel that broadcasting your location real-time is a huge mistake – it makes you vulnerable to electronic pickpocketing or even worse – people knowing you’re away from your house and making your home vulnerable to robberies!

Besides, I would hate for everyone to know how boring my life is. My FourSquare update would probably always say “Flisha is at home.” But things are about to change! :)

My wonderful boyfriend has come to Manila! Yes! :) He got himself a job as a “clinical scientist” or “life scientist” at the Cancer Institute, Philippines General Hospital. How prestigious!!! Hahah! :) Basically they perform clinical tests on the effectivity of certain drugs. He gets free food, the hours are great and the pay is sufficient. I am so jealous!!! Not like me, where the hours are crazy (the person whose role I am replacing tells me she gets in at 1pm and goes home by 5am. What???), the pay is depressing and the pressure of work can almost make you suicidal.

I should have studied medicine. Anyway, I am so glad for my boyfriend! He gets his dream job and he gets to be with his dream girl. Perfect, right? Hahahah!!!

Here’s to weekends with the one you love. ♥

There’s a Fitness First branch in my office building Robinson’s Summit Center in Ayala, Makati. I have long wanted to join a gym, especially this branch since it’s so convenient, but my company has a corporate membership at Gold’s Gym. We get the full package at a fraction of the original price, so it’s very tempting to join Gold’s instead. The problem is that Gold’s Gym is quite far away, it’s a 30-minute walk from the office and a jeepney away from my home.

So when Deal Grocer offered a two-week voucher at Fitness First for only Php400, I jumped at the chance. I just wanted to see and try out the gym. But it was not a very good experience. The first day I got there, a sales lady let me sit down and immediately started hawking their packages.

She spent an hour of my time persuading me to get their package.

Her first offer to me was this:

Monthly Due – 3800
Joining Fee – 4000
Admin Fee – 2100
BodyFirst (Optional) – 1885
Total – 11,785

Can you believe she wanted Php11,785 upfront for the first month of membership?!? What the hell? Why is there a joining fee PLUS an admin fee? And the BodyFirst program? It just means you get 3 hours’ worth of personal training (no, this is not a per month service, this is just a one-time thing plus 3 books on fitness). Crazy! She couldn’t even explain to me the difference between the joining and the admin fees. Or why they were so big.

I would have high-tailed it outta there if they wanted me to pay 11,000 freakin’ pesos for a month’s worth of membership. Did I mention a month at Gold’s for me was only 1,100??? That’s including the one-time personal training sessions!

Then the sales lady said that since it was my first time visiting their club, they had a “First Visit Promo” which means they would waive my joining fee, and the admin fee would go down to 1500 only, and they would offer me an ongoing 2,300 monthly due. So, total I would pay initially would be 3,800 only. But I had to pay via credit card. Uh-oh. I had heard about this scam. FF would dramatically cut down fees so they get access to your credit card, but once they had that data, they were gonna charge you forever. Even if you asked to “freeze” or terminate your contract after term expiration, it wouldn’t happen. They were just gonna charge you every month until you terminate your credit card just so the charges will stop – and that’s if your credit card company will let you terminate given you have pending charges.

So I immediately said NO. Not charging my credit card. Then she said, what about your parents? Don’t they have credit cards? Or sisters/brothers/relatives? I looked at her weirdly and just said NO. Then she mentioned I had arrived with a friend (my officemate who works out at FF and I coincidentally arrived in the same elevator so she saw us talking). Why couldn’t I use *his* credit card, then? Was she high?!? Why would I use someone else’s credit card if I didn’t want to risk my own? I told her NO, using a credit card is not an option for me.

So the third option was cash. She told me joining fee would be 1,000, admin fee would be 1,500, monthly fee would be 2,900, plus 387 for the April fee. What April fee?? She said something like, oh because there are still a few days left in April so you have to pay for that. And I’m so confused because I have a voucher from DealGrocer. I am *fully paid* for the month of April. And she says, yes yes we already discounted your April fee because of your DealGrocer voucher or else it would be much bigger. At this point I just wanted to throttle her because I had no idea what she was talking about. Here I am fully paid for April and she’s trying to make me think I need to pay more and I should even be grateful they made the fees lower. Hello!!!

I said NO, isn’t there a way you can lower the fees? It boiled down to a total of 5,787 for the first month by the way. It just sounds so horribly wrong to pay for April when I am *already* paid for April. I wanted her to remove the 387 fee. I was even ready to think about that crazy monthly of 2,900!!!

But she wouldn’t, and even referred me to her boss, who tried all the same tactics she did, except the boss looked a bit more taray and tried to persuade me more strongly. Unfortunately for her, I don’t like mataray people and she turned me off more than the first sales lady. I told her the same thing, can’t you lower the fees? I told her that it’s not like I don’t have options. I have Gold’s Gym which is a lot cheaper, so they should offer me a more competitive package. And she just kept repeating bullshit about how I need to value my fitness, and this is the price of fitness and convenience, blah blah. Finally, because it seemed like I wasn’t budging, she said OK, I’ll try to talk to my boss about this. (Another boss?? How many do I have to go through with?) But can you give a downpayment of 500?

At this point, I raised my eyebrow and just said my favorite word of the hour, NO. What the eff? I have to pay 500 just so she can talk to her boss? To me it seemed like a bribe.

She gave up and returned me to the original sales lady and by that time I had spent too much time in the gym so I decided to activate my membership the following day. (It went well and they didn’t bug me all that much anymore, they just let me work out, which is all I wanted in the first place.)

What crazy fees, huh? No wonder so many people are turned off by Fitness First. I’m still hoping they call me and offer a better package, but I’m not holding my breath.

This is so months ago, but I wanted to dump our photos so here we go. :)

Thanks to Deal Grocer, I got two coupons for a brunch buffet at Chef Jessie’s in Rockwell Makati, and ate so much it almost disabled me (hello SSDI?). It was touted as a French-Mediterranean spread so I was super excited. And at only P700 per person thanks to the 50% off coupon, it was a great deal. :)

We got served some fruit juice mixed with vodka, I think. I took a sip and hated it. Gim took a sip and loved it. But none of us drank it, because Gim was on his self-imposed alcohol break due to the pending medical boards. Actually he kept shooting me nasty looks since I wouldn’t drink it, hahah. He wanted me to drink for the both of us, since it was a shame to leave the cocktails untouched when he was itching to dump them down his throat. But everyone who knows me knows I can’t stand the taste of alcohol, so I shot the nasty looks right back at him. LOL.

Unfortunately I didn’t take a photo of the spread, just a few photos of our plates and me and Gim. But I mostly enjoyed the bacon, as you can see from my photos. Hahaha. Though I have no idea how that is French or Mediterranean?? There was also some slices of meat, but a bit too raw for my taste. Gim enjoyed kept coming back those, though. I loved the beef chunks roasted in garlic. Best dish of the meal!

There were lots of eggs. Poached, bedeviled, omellettes. Some caviar too. And some fruits. But you know what was lacking? Pastries!! I really thought there would be cakes and baguettes and all sorts of breads. Like you’d expect from a French buffet. But unfortunately, their idea of French pastry was chocolate cupcakes. Meh.

My final say on this spread would be that it was a fail on a choice of foods. But it if weren’t labeled French-Mediterranean, I would’ve found no fault.

Here come the photos!

More random shots below. :)

A few days ago, walking down V.A Rufino St on my way home from work, I saw a whole line of cars being towed away to – um – carjail, I guess.

And I don’t think the cars had any of those sensible curt trailer hitches. Like below.

See, the whole street is full of these signs. But people park their cars along the street anyway.

I didn’t get a picture, but it was not a pretty sight! Gleaming cars being towed away by the ugliest rusty tow trucks you could imagine! Not unlike the tow truck below.

And people on the streets on their cellphones frantically calling their friends…

The damage to those cars. Tsk tsk. I wonder how much you have to fork over to get your car back if it’s towed away for illegal parking?

Morale lesson, better to lose a hundred a day on parking than your entire car in a minute! Or, like me, why don’t you just get a taxi. :P

I am looking for office supplies online, wonder where I can get some?

Preferably of the cute variety, like…

…this!

…or an adorable assortment of thingamajigs like this!

…or a notebook/pen owlie like this!

…or a bunch of pineapple stickies like these!

…or a swirly thingy like this!

…or a funny monkey sticky like this!

…or a sweet little sheep sticky like this!

…or a red apply sticky like this!

…or adorable little sticky note holders like these!

I don’t know what came over me. Ever since I came back from Japan, suddenly I’ve been needing a whole lot of cute in my life. Like stuff toys hanging from my bags and cellphones. Like Babydoll’s accessorized gun in Suckerpunch. That kind of cute.

I remember coming back after a harried day of frantic last-minute Japanese shopping in Umeda, Osaka. I got cute little cat/deer/dog/squirrel/what-animal-have-you phone accessories. I also got sheep, dog and cat cable holders in pink, yellow and light blue. The only non-cute thing I got, but still pushing cute, was a zipper accessory for Gim’s phone. I say pushing cute because really what’s a zipper doing dangling from your phone aside from being cute? Eh? :) :) :)

So, what do you think of these sticky notes? So kawaii, don’t you think??? :)

You would think that I am so used to dating Gim by now (since it’s been almost ten years!!) that another date wouldn’t faze me. You’d be wrong. In fact, I so look forward to each and every date we have. Maybe because we’re always far apart, I’m used to missing him. So being him with him makes me giddy. :)

Tomorrow is Gim’s oathtaking here in Manila (because he’s a licensed doctor now!!) so he arrived just last weekend. I had work on Saturday so today is our first whole day to be together freely! He woke me up at noontime with bacon and eggs. Yumm!!! I love love love when Gim cooks for me! It can be as simple a meal as possible and it would taste delicious! Maybe his sweat makes it tasty. Hahaha yucky!! But I will eat it anyway. ♥ ♥ ♥

In the afternoon we decided to go to Ortigas. We strolled around in Shangri-La Mall, my first time ever to visit it. I spied a lot of things I wanted to buy, but I restrained myself. Because I will make Gim buy all the things I want when he finally starts has a salary! :) :) :) Evil! Mwahaha!

For snacks, we still had a Crepes and Creme GC so we header over to SM Megamall. I ordered the Fiesta Crepe (ube and langka ice cream plus banana, macapuno, leche flan and pinipig toppings) while Gim got himself a DIY crepe with vanilla ice cream plus blueberry and macapuno toppings. Both tasted super yummy!!

We strolled around SM Megamall the entire afternoon, then decided that we would watch a movie. Before that, we had dinner at Pollo Loco – again a first for me. :) I had roasted chicken with rice (Php150), while Gim had roasted chicken with potato salad and tortilla sidings (Php170). The meals were surprisingly inexpensive, but as roasted chickens go, I prefer Kenny Rogers Roasters. The chicken was not bad, but I did not like the potato salad – the potatoes were mushy and there were pickles in it. Ew! I also didn’t like the salsa that accompanied all chicken dishes – I prefer gravy! Gim liked it though.

The movie we picked to watch was I Am Number Four. Short review – the acting was really bad, from ALL the main actors Alex Pettyfer, Dianna Agron, Teresa Palmer and Callan McAuliffe. The only saving grace was Timothy Olyphant but he was killed all too soon. :( The plot is also quite shallow. Alex Pettyfer plays an alien whose race has been exterminated. There were created to protect their planet, but the planet was destroyed before they were able to carry out their mission. The nine of them were sent to Earth with their accompanying guardians, and one by one they are being hunted by the evil aliens who killed their race. Number Three has just been killed and Number Four has been on the run all his life. Number Four leaves his current town and goes to a new place with the new identity John Smith. His guardian tells him to be invisible. But he meets a girl who likes to photograph things, likes her for no real reason that we can see other than “they click”, and after a few dates, decides to risk his life and his mission so he can stay with her in town. End result, the evil hunters find him and gets his guardian killed. Good thing Number Six shows up out of the blue to save his ass, oh and his Mogadorian pet who was sent to protect him also helps to save him. After defeating the evil aliens, he decides to leave town with Number Six and a new friend, and he leaves his girl while basically telling her he will love only her all his life. Okaayy. Having said that, the action scenes and special effects were amazing. So, I don’t regret watching it on the big screen, but I’m sad the plot and acting wasn’t very convincing. All the time, I kept thinking of how stupid Number Four was for always creating trouble and exposure for himself when he knew he was next to die.

I’m thinking maybe the movie left out a lot of scenes from the book. So I am planning to read the series (it’s a proposed six-book series) by Pittacus Lore. Maybe it will make more sense.

Anyway, after the movie, we decided to take some pics around the mall. Except, Gim was too shy to take a pic with the I Am Number Four poster because there were too many people milling around. So he took a picture against Pirates of the Caribbean instead. LOL.

..and also a car that transforms into a robot.

What a fun day!!! :)

Well. I have finally finished a harrowing week’s worth of ITIV V3 RCV Training! My mind felt like it was being rubbed raw by abrasives this whole time, because every after training, I still have to work, and my client is escalating issues to my manager, and I had meetings left and right, and received all sorts of work-related distractions. I was hardly able to study. :(

Ensue cramming on the night before the ITIL exam!!!

The training I took, by the way, is for the Release, Control and Validation life stages of the ITIL Service Management life cycle. Yeah, that’s my boring line of work. :) But it feeds, clothes and shelters me, so I am grateful for it, and grateful for the opportunities to learn and grow my knowledge.

I slept at around 3 am last night already. And at the end of that, I had only finished reading the ITIL Foundations refresher, the introduction to Service Transition, and the Change Management part. I hadn’t even begun Service Evaluation, Configuration Management, Release and Deployment Management, Service Validation, or any of the Roles and Responsibilities! I was exhausted and at the same time panicky because I failed the first mock exam!

Luckily I think the studying did some good as I passed the second mock exam this morning. We had our actual ITIL RCV V3 exam in the afternoon, and we will find out our scores in two weeks.

Gosh, I hope I passed!!!