paintings

i recently commissioned a budding local painter for two works of art and i'm happy with what i got. at four digits each, they're quite costly for an unknown artist but hey, it's not every day that you can feed your soul this way.





and there goes my chance to visit an asian destination this year! but come to think of it: i have some "racket" up my sleeve that i've been putting off for quite a time already! and so if you'll excuse me, i just have to make a call.

summer class

it was my first grad school summer class and the schedule---5:00 to 9:00 pm; saturdays and sundays---made me miss out a lot of fun. but it was well worth it.

composed mostly of MPA with sprinklings of MBA and MAED pencil pushers, my human resource management class was by far my largest. and it would go down in my pedagogic history as the subject where i had the most fun.

my reputation as “terror teacher” precedes me and i love mining it for what it's worth. and so with a long face, i said on our first meeting: “was this the same group that went to dr. omas-as to ask her not to let me handle this subject?”

only the faint rustle of coco fronds could be heard.

“and i gathered that dr. omas-as didn’t agree but instead told you that my bark is worse than my bite; that I don’t flunk students,” i deadpanned. ”well, this much i can tell you: she was wrong!”

twenty-two pairs of eyes darted to the floor just as the coco fronds turned mute. i held the silence for the longest time. then i smiled.

we hit it off from there.

many weekends and laughters later, three-fourths of the class sent me text messages, thanking me for the chance to do a removal exam. and after checking the test papers, i just knew that i’d be making a lot of miserable souls happy.

family day

cagwait white beach at its most pristine.

because my stint with a coal mining firm shortly after graduation doesn't count, my present work is technically my first. and i’m proud of my office despite people's sweeping generalization of government agencies being inefficient, corrupt, or both.

what makes me love my office more is that it values people as, well, people. and this it demonstrates best each time we have our annual family day.

half a full moon ago, we, along with our respective families, had an overnight stay at cagwait white beach. and as always, kids and adults alike enjoyed the sun, the sea, and the sand. really, one can't have enough of cagwait’s allure.

my office always ensures that during our family day, nobody goes home empty handed. and so more than the nice food and an even nicer company, we learned new skills. on the first day, nurses from the Philippine National Red Cross made a lecture-demo on Basic Life Support and CPR. the next day we had a young budding painter, ryan novo, teaching kids basic art lessons.


an officemate doing chest compression on a manananggal.


art-attacked kids.

tired and sunburned, we went home thanking god for making us part of an office that gives us a sense of family and home.