The Night's Watch

I've adjusted fairly quickly and smoothly to the night shift lifestyle. And I don't feel like a Zombie because it's legit. Meaning it's consistent. Basically, My days are 12 hours earlier/later than anyone elses. my AMs and PMs are flipped. It's been good, but sometimes when I get home in the super-early morning I feel sad that I can't have a cup of coffee. There's nothing better than a cup of coffee at dawn/early morning. But drinking coffee when I get home, body clock-wise, would be like drinking coffee at 6pm. Not the best idea if I want to fall asleep at noon to wake up properly before work.

But it has some awesome trade-offs. Temperature's nice, work goes by super fast, no traffic, and just now I had a 7am hotdog lunch (complete with a pickle)...

And about the coffee thing, there's always black tea. When I put creamer/milk and sugar in it, it's almost as good as drinking coffee. But it doesn't mess my sleep up.

I can't wait to get settled enough to start doing creative stuff again. I have about 8 hours free everyday and I'd like to get back to practicing photography again, even though my camera does have that problem with the shutter. I'm hoping that feeling one with it again, like I did last year, will motivate me to find a repair shop and turn it in. At least this time I'll actually be earning money that I can use towards repairing/buying art-life tools. Like this laptop. This is my mom's. The one she gave me a while ago is already dead. And now this one freezes when left idle. I don't want it to get PC cancer before fixing it, and so as soon as I get my salary I'm turning it in. It feels good knowing I'll soon afford to pay for non-basic needs.

Anyway right now I still feel sleepy and low-energy in the morning, before going to bed. I'm hoping a little regular stretching and moving around and laughing at Kid President videos (and other vids) on the reg will help me get some more energy in the mornings before going to bed. So I can do creative stuff and maybe find what I should do next with my life :)

sweets from my sweet, sugar from my honey

Just wanted to share some pics of goodies from ppls i heart.

one mochi from Carmen which her friend gave her from Japan

Emmy's favorite color of Haribo crocodiles! :3 

I keep them in this Panda Jar hehe

I keep them in my room now cos they get too hard in the fridge.

I decided I'm really going to zoom my mind into going to France next year. I'm setting my intention for real. It may fail, but my conscience will be clear knowing that I tried my best! :) I hope I do it so that I don't waste any money in applying :p haha.

Jarring

 (I almost called this post The Conjarring but I decided that banking on current events does not look good on me.)

Remember the jar I bought at the start of the year to put strips of paper in that recount good things that happens during the year? I abandoned it while Beardy was here, because somehow it's hard to stop to take a moment to write about good things happening while they are happening a lot. 

So I typed all the good stuff I remembered happening as of late and from Beardy's vacation in the summer. On one whole sheet of paper. Using my favorite colors of course.

I couldn't remember when stuff happened, so I gave up on the part where I put the date in the strips. I figured they werent that important, so long as I remember that the stuff happened. (although it would be nice to know but meh) and that I should let go a little bit. I'm trying to do this thing where I don't micromanage every single little thing. I'm going to focus instead on macromanaging ... and normalmanaging. I JUST WANT TO BE A NORMAL PERSON STOP IT BRAIN

There's a couple of cute things in the jar that I like, the heart-shaped candle on a stick from my free birthday sundae from Ryuma, the candlestick from Beardy's free apple pie on his going away/birthday dinner, and the blue spade toothpick (fave color and fave card suit!) from when I met my friends and Pia made us try her aunt's bread pudding. Fitting souveneirs from nice days spent with loved ones! There's also an origami rose I made around my birthday, I wrote about my birthday in it. Then I stuck it into the lid. Fits perfectly and looks really pretty. 

In other life news, I've just finished my first week of training! Doing well so far, and my co-trainees are pretty awesome! They're super funny and we all get along well. I really hope I get this job! I adjusted to the 10pm shift pretty quickly and well, (not to mention they pay more for nights) the workplace is super near and I don't need to be smoked bea-cued by pollution, and it's just a good first job I think. I think after graduating is the best time to work for a BPO. It will give me time to think of what I really wanna do and it won't be wasted time because I'll be interacting with people every day and I'll get to start saving money! Which is the best part for me, I won't lie.

How We Do

More on My Weird Family from last night!

Last night we celebrated my aunt's "17th anniversary of (her) 40th birthday" as we call it, and it was so much fun! There was a videoke set-up at the front of the house, which proved to be a somewhat bad idea because we had a little bit too much fun with it :p (Good thing nobody called the cops on us)

cuteness tootness

It all started really tame. There were tables set up all pretty, some pretty food, and more importantly, we were all sober.

magically, all of the celebrant's siblings came in red! UNPLANNED!

mom leading the prayers as per yoush

my uncle is even reiki-ing the food with magic prayer hands. the works

minicupcakes and yema~

my lovely nieces and trish showing her cute lego creation

I only remember my cousin Biboy taking out the alcohol, then my brother letting me try the scotch, then I made myself a Jack&Coke, then I decided to wind down with some cake and peach tea.. Then somehow I guess the Jack started to kick in as I stared at my third saucer of cake

"Pink... tea.. so.. pretty.."

Then boom. Our collective minds just imploded.

...I don't even remember what they were singing here. But I took videos of my family going wild during Bohemian Rhapsody and Bagsakan.

...Speaking of "bagsakan",

Even when I was tipsy this confused me!

Anyway, I kept thinking about how Beardy would react if he witnessed all of the crazy stuff going down. He'd probably be overwhelmed. It's thinking about stuff like that that makes me realise how strange my family must seem to outsiders XD Beardy said the idea of drinking with your parents in parties is very peculiar to him, and somehow even if I could make that observation myself, I didn't really see it that way before he told me! My family is kinda weird! But that's how we do :)

Things That Made Me Happy Today

OITNB 

this show is so AWESOME

iced morning coffee (not instant :333) 

my cutest lil’ pup 

a great first meal of the day! Lettuce and cucumber with a dash of sesame kewpie dressing, chili porkchops and just a wee bit of rice.. (No photo :3) 

successfully controlling my portions. i still ate like a fully grown adult, a full big girl plate, it’s just that i usually over-eat when the food is that good..Ate more than one slice of cake at the party tonight, though.

the fact that I’m going to wake up on monday to a job (even if it's just training period for now) and it’s making me feel purposeful ..and that it’s early enough in the game to not feel bad about it i guess..but i’m kinda hoping i never feel bad about it! just tired. which is fine.

the privilege of not having to travel big distances to go to work 

the privilege of living at home and having basic necessities and much more 

some cute notebooks!!! 

getting a massage last night and feeling like i kind of deserved it? I mean I fell asleep. That tells you something about how tired you are, right? Plus, I played a Jonsi album during and it turned out to be an AWESOME idea.

Re-visiting pictures taken during Beardy's stay, including this one from my mom's phone.. Who's by the way super cute with how she's now down with the techie stuff cos of her Samsung S4 (SHE HAS INSTAGRAM!! I don't have instagram!)

My Weird Family.

it's my aunt's bday celebration today and some hilarious shit went down with the videoke machine as usual.

this was when it was still kid friendly, before it got crazy. i might post videos, though.

The Funny Frenchman

Hi internet! How is everyone doing? How was everyone's July? I somehow kept thinking it was August 1 for three days straight, which made life really confusing. I greeted Beardy two days in advance for our 33rd monthsary and I woke up today noticing that it's still our monthsary... I was like whaat? I guess time just goes a looooot slower without Beardy around. Because it's not nearly as fun! Three days felt like a whole week, while the two months he spent here with me felt like nothing at all. We did so much stuff, and I honestly had the best time of my life. But of course it ended all too soon!

But I'm not one to sulk. (Hehehe, at least not anymore. I didn't take it well last year when he left!) So I've been cheering myself up by watching a lot of Girl Code, re-playing some Plants vs Zombies, and downloading a bunch of other stuff to entertain me with to pass time in between bouts of job-hunting.

(I just noticed that it's been mentioned more than three times in my timeline that today feels like a friday.. HAS SOMEONE STOPPED TIME FOR EVERYONE AND MADE EVERYONE JUST REPEAT AUGUST 1??? WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING lol)

yup my camera still has a problem

And now to cheer myself up further, I'm going to fondly reminisce about the funny shit that came out of Beardy's mouth during our trips.

i dunno, i find this picture hilarious. looks like a panic attack after finding out the zoo is closed (it wasn't, we were just early)

Backstory for first one: When we went to the indoor zoo, we found Jenny the orangutan lounging on her seat without her trainer. We were very eager, but shy and apprehensive about approaching her without supervision. But he slowly, very slowly approached her, making eye contact, and walking very slowly closer.. Until she offered him a finger and they did the ET thing:

yeah he has a way with animals

But then afterwards I got to take a picture beside her with her trainer there:

Me: Mine isn't as organic cos she was told to pose with me. Yours was a natural encounter.

Him: Yeah... A natural encounter... 
Him: With a monkey in a t-shirt.

The zoo was really nice, I would highly recommend it for anyone who's looking for one in Metro Manila!

here's a picture of a lioness breathing some dragonballs. just kidding. it's just reflections of lamps

There was only one thing I found to be not so great about it (aside from some sad-looking animals, but they weren't sad cos they're maltreated, it's just natural for wild animals to be uncomfortable in captivity, even with ample space and food!) ...At least, on the day we were there, they played current radio-circulation music and it just really didn't suit the surroundings.

Me: They should play jungle music instead...  Or African music.

Him: Yeah... Like Phil Collins. 

Beardy: bringer of funsies. whisperer of birdies.

And there was a time where we were sat down watching a movie in my room and he was caressing my shin, and he smiles at me very affectionately, and says:

Him: Even when you're a bit hairy your legs are very soft...

I think it's the non-ironic sincerity of it that made it really hilarious to me.

we regularly had movie nights/afternoons where we'd just make ourselves some iced drinks (with straws!) and popcorn or chips

We were reading the news and there were some awful, unacceptable racist behaviour going down and he was visibly upset by it:

Him: I wish there was a way to turn people black... You can punish neo-nazis by turning them black!

The last one's a bit harder to explain. I'll do most of it after the excerpt, but for now let it be said that we have a thing for puns and point-winking at each other to applaud good ones and that we've been trying to teach each other our mother tongues.

the nice people from Makati Apartelle did this really cute thing and chose somewhat a french theme for our kitchen decor and placemats XD

We were at the place we stayed at in Makati. He was on the bed and I was at the fridge and he said something like..

Him: Pass me the ice please.. Glacons.
Me: Small.. ice? Oh, like, ice cubes?
Him: Small cubs! Get it? Cos small bears ("ours") are oursons

Haha okay, okay I admit that one doesn't really translate well written down but it was adorable when he said it.

I feel like my Beardy is getting funnier and funnier as our relationship gets older. I dunno, maybe it's just our humours kind of adapting to each others'? Whatever it is, I'm loving it! Laughing burns a lot of calories, you know.

PS: I got a job at a call center nearby! It's not exactly related to my field, but it's a good start! I need to learn how to talk to strangers. That's a skill that's universal in its application. Would be nice to be paid to learn something you can really use :) Also, obviously I started writing this at the start of August and it's already the 9th so... Yeah.