So we had another round of house-viewing yesterday, although I didn't get to the first house we were supposed to view. Apparently it's really just a three-room, the fourth room needs to be fitted in with a partition etc before it can be used as a bedroom. Carol and Faye (who went to see it) didn't like it, so that's that right there.

The second house was quite promising! We really liked it once we came in--it was another corner unit, and there was a recessed space for bikes (they had two tied in), and the furnishings were fabulous. An LCD TV in the living room, another TV in the master's bedroom (a major plus for Carol, haha), a mini-bar, good appliances, great kitchen, spacious rooms...except for the fourth room. :( It was small, just enough for a bed and wardrobe, had no air conditioning unit (and really no good way to put one in), and the window was a sad affair. It was quite a deal-breaker, although the rest of the house was absolutely fabulous.

We're working with two particular agents (in addition to the occasional ads we see online and in the newspapers, which obviously have different agents), one a friend of my cousins (Aileen) and another a friend of Elvie's underwater hockey buddy (Nigel). They're both quite nice, and we're really hoping we find a good place soon.

This morning we had the movers give us a quote for moving all of our stuff. Basically all we have to do is pack up the small, loose items in boxes they provide, and they'll do all the lifting, trucking, disassembly and reassembly. A little steep, but at least things are taken care of. They wrap stuff in plastic and everything.

Now I just need to finalize all the stuff I'm shipping home--clothes and shoes that I don't use anymore included.

So we've started house hunting in earnest this week. We've seen four houses so far, and came close to closing the deal with one, but it didn't push through. We're not (yet) in a rush, and it seems that even though yes, finding four-bedroom houses is more difficult than your typical three-bedroom ones, it's not impossible, and they are out there.

The first house was somewhat out of the way; you'd need to ride the LRT to get there (in addition to the MRT of course). It was quite spacious, but unfortunately, all the rooms had rather odd shapes. It was a corner unit, and the quirky rooms are actually full of character, but since we're only renting and we're not like, out to remodel and make the place ours, it would be difficult.

I will talk about the next house last, since that was the house we almost got. ;)

The third house was quite spacious, had air conditioning units in all rooms, and was actually pretty good--save for the non-optimal kitchen and the curry smell. We looked around online and it doesn't look like there's a way to remove the curry smell from places, which is unfortunate. The kitchen too, was separated into two rooms: one with the fridge and stove only, and one with the sink and washing machine only.

The fourth house, now well that was a no-brainer. When we arrived, it looked messy, cluttered, and it was almost as if the owners (who lived in the unit) didn't really care that there were people coming over to look at the unit, especially since the man only had shorts on, no t-shirt (!!!). They spoke in Chinese to the agent, laughed, etc. and it was only later did we learn (when the agent told us, and advised against the unit) that they were making racist comments about us Filipinos renting the place. Can you say OFFENSIVE?

Now, the second house--we all really liked the second house. I personally loved it. It was a corner unit, and the owners bought the short bit of hallway leading up to their door, so there was a hallway sort of thing going on before the unit itself. the floors, walls, etc were nice, the place was spacious and well kept. It was also just across the street from the mall and MRT station. The only drawbacks were that only the master's bedroom had an aircon unit built in, and the unit was largely unfurnished save for the kitchen appliances like stove, fridge, and washing machine.

At the end of the day, we were prepared to go for the unit, as long as they put in two single bed frames and a wardrobe unit, to cut costs on what we were going to need to acquire/buy to get the unit furnished. But alas, the landlord wouldn't budge on the price, and wouldn't shell out to get the bed frames and wardrobe (we were going to have to get/buy our own aircon units, living room set, dining set, TV, etc). So... we let it go.

Ah well, we guess it's not meant to be. We also supposed that if the landlord wasn't reasonable enough to provide us those things, then we might end up having problems later on with regards to dealing with him, so it's probably best to just let it go.

But ah, that was one pretty HDB unit.

I haven't felt like writing recently. After Philippines and Hong Kong one after another last month, I felt pretty drained for around a week, also partly because there was a lot of catching up to do and prepping for stuff.

My week in the Philippines was good, in a simple sort of way. There were a number of Cashflow 101 games--my parents bought the board game, and if it weren't so pricey I would have loved to buy one too. There was a mini family reunion of sorts, although only half of the family was able to go, but my cousins stayed overnight, where we played Cashflow 101, watched movies, and watched Achmed the Dead Terrorist (wut?). (I think Dan Horn is loads more talented then Jeff Dunham, though. Warning, linked video may be slightly offensive; this one isn't, and actually shows off his talent better, but the former generally feels like a better show.) I bought clothes even though I didn't need any more, had lunches and dinners with people, and tested out my dad's new Canon EOS 450D. Holy moly, do I want one now. It is the shiny! (Birthday Flickr set here, Reunion/Cashflow 101 game set here.)

Hong Kong was rainy. I didn't go shopping because I was pretty much out of budget after shopping in the Philippines. Lots of free, good food. I'm finding that I'm liking seafood more and more. I had to switch hotel rooms because the first was a smoking room, although since it was a corner room, it had two windows and a walk-in closet. I'm still waiting for the reimbursement (since it was a business trip), I'm hoping it will come before I need to pay off the ol' credit card. I wish I could have gone out more. I want to go back sometime as a tourist. (Flickr set here.)

Friends and I went back to Settler's Café, and I'm really liking that place even though this was a different branch we went to. It's fun! I like board games. We discovered that we prefer thinking games more :P "Fun" games that require quick reflexes or whatnot make us stressed, hahaha. We played Ticket to Ride this time around. I still want to try out Kill Doctor Lucky again, because the other time when we tried, we only got confused. Unfortunately, reviews recommend playing it with around four people as more can get rather...complicated. I'm a stickler for mystery games, apparently (Cluedo is still my first love).

I have a badminton racket now! I've been going with Faye et al for badminton intermittently for a while now, and Faye gave me a racket as a birthday present. Hee. I'm suddenly all raring to go play now, I was even thinking of reserving a court near here for a game just a while ago. But erm, the onePA website is broken. It's probably only broken in non-IE browsers, though, because I had those same problems when I was trying to sign up for PA membership.

I bought a handmade-books book today, I couldn't help it. Of course, it's only making me itch to actually make some again. But I have to wait until we move so that I'd have space. I want to go back to that art supplies/etc store in Bras Basah again. I haven't actually gone in as they were closing the first time I came 'round, but it looks like a HUGE store, with all sorts of stuff inside. I saw easels and other implements, paper, tools, etc etc. I hope they have a bookpress, because we don't have any encyclopedia-heavy books here, unlike at home :P

I also picked up a balikbayan box from Lucky Plaza today, and have started dumping things I need to send to the Philippines like old clothes and shoes, so that I won't need to cart them all along when we move in August. I never fully realized how many of my old clothes don't fit me anymore :( Was it really just only a year ago? That feels quite sad. I do have a goal though--just within this week, a new ice cream shop opened in Citilink named Marvelous Cream, and I pass by it everytime I go home. I've been looking at the posters etc for a while now while they were setting up shop, and now they're open. I'm holding off, though. I plan to reward myself with buying something from it if I lose five kilos by end of July. I love ice cream, and not trying it out is almost painful, so this is a good goal :D (Photo shown is on Flickr, but as I found it on a website, I couldn't find the actual photo page as the person didn't link it back.)

Sometimes I wonder if I'm overanalyzing this whole permanent residency thing. Carol, Faye, and Elvie are all PRs now. I've been meaning to get my application in for a while already, but I never seem to actually decide if I will. I don't know if I'm just thinking about it too much and making mountains out of molehills.

I watched a couple of movies recently, and I think the one I enjoyed the most is Incredible Hulk. Oh, I certainly laughed a lot in Kung Fu Panda, but I doubt I'd watch it again; whereas I'd watch Hulk again, I'm sure. Edward Norton is really good. I'm liking both him and Robert Downey Jr/Iron Man a lot more than Tobey Maguire/Spider-man. I do think Tobey is cuter, but after the first Spider-man film... erm. :P Maybe the rest (Norton/Downey) will also not be as alright when they do sequels for those movies?

Oh! I almost forgot. Diablo III! Omg, I can't wait. I'm liking the gameplay a lot. I hope my MacBook can handle the requirements. Eeeee.

Okay, I should sleep. I'm breaking out again because of all the late nights I've been keeping. I need more than 24 hours in a day, argh.

So this is the long-overdue Bohol 2008 entry. Finally, finally, I know.

Last April, I went home to fly with the rest of the family to Tagbilaran, Bohol. Part of the reason for it was because it was the BCBP's national anniversary, which was being held in Bohol -- my parents were going. So we went with them, as we'd never been to Bohol before.

Bohol is such a pretty, pretty place. I've been to Boracay and I can say that Bohol's beaches are much more to my liking than Bora's, although I suppose that's because I'm not into the night life and parties and stuff like that. The beaches and the water in Bohol are so clear, cool, and clean, perfect for a relaxing getaway.

I flew in on April 3, and while I was in the terminal, there was a domestic helper who was making a bit of a scene. I don't know any details, but she was being detained by a couple of police, and she wouldn't answer any questions asked of her (which I didn't hear). She was saying, almost yelling, things like, "asan na mga kasama ko (where are my companions)?! ", "ano, kinahihiya n'yo ba ako (well, are you ashamed of me)?!", and "ako ang totoong (I am the real) Flor Contemplacion!" Her movements were jerky, erratic, showing her apparent distress and annoyance, and I suppose most of them alarmed the police because they soon cuffed her, and then led her away when she started to jerk about in an attempt to... dislodge the cuffs? I don't know.

The people in the queue (and myself, I admit) were mostly silent: pretending indifference, studiously keeping their eyes away to keep from staring, or discussing the event in hushed tones. My own feelings were mixed, as I obviously knew nothing of what she was being detained for, although from the comments of the people ahead of me in the queue it seemed that something was found in her bags. Was she being framed? I had no idea, but her obvious anger and annoyance and refusal to cooperate with the police did little to make people sympathize, I think. I did feel annoyed when a few travelers passing by took shots of her being led away. It felt like such an invasion of privacy, and I felt quite sorry for her then.

The rest of the flight went by as usual, though, and when I arrived in the Philippines, we went shopping for a few last-minute things. We flew to Bohol the day after on Cebu Pacific, and checked in the hotel. I went with my sisters to a Lingkod ng Panginoon prayer meeting that night while the parents went to a BCBP dinner.

The next day, we went to the BCBP breakfast. The skies were absolutely lovely, it was breathtakingly blue. The speakers' sharings were inspiring, especially the ones that dealt with putting up businesses. Afterwards, we went with a bunch of other people to one of the two floating restaurants in the area, in Loay, I believe. Again, the scenery was absolutely fabulous, and I almost used up all my camera's disk space! I deleted quite a number of earlier photos to make room. We went to the Clarin Ancestral House, saw this HUGE dictionary, saw a HUGE python, and then went back to the Bohol Beach Club for the anticipated Mass and BCBP's Sabado Nights celebration.

The next day, we set off again. We saw the Chocolate Hills (but it rained :( sniff sniff), the butterfly farm, and went to lunch to the other floating restaurant in Loboc, Bohol (which was actually the first; when demand got too high, the owner's brother opened the second one). I got terribly dizzy and seasick while on the ride, so not many pictures there. I'd been having a headache even before (probably because they were singing on the Magic Sing inside the chartered bus...) but the food was probably not that good--my dad also felt rather odd after.

We went to see the tarsiers afterward. Oh, the pretty, cute little things! Now, I've seen photos of tarsiers but I've never ever thought they were cute. Whenever someone would say they were, I was skeptical because they really look odd and... odd. However, after seeing them up close, omg, the cuteness! Unfortunately we're not allowed to hold because unless you do it correctly, they may either go into shock (and then die), or bite you.

Using flash for photos was not allowed because they can also go into shock (and die), but unfortunately.... oooh this really annoys me no end. Of course people didn't listen. There was this one guy who had a huge DSLR, and we waited patiently for him to finish taking his photo of the tarsiers with his girlfriend. He aimed, and then poof! went the flash. ARGH! What's the freaking use of his DSLR when he can't just fiddle with aperture and not use the damn flash?! The result was, the poor tarsiers were blind, and in shock (the tarsiers in the photo here is the same as those). Can you imagine?! The poor tarsiers with their huge bug-out eyes, and then suddenly there's this white blinding light right there in front of them. No wonder they go into shock and die.

I'm still seething.

Anyway, as I mentioned in this post, the video of a tarsier eating is absolutely cute. They are adorable!

We went to Baclayon church afterward, which was breathtaking! The church is one of the oldest churches in the Philippines. The walls are built from a mixture of corals and egg whites, and the church itself is wonderfully preserved. I loved the colors of the church--vibrant pinks, blues, and purples.

We went down to the Hinagdanan cave afterward, which is a natural underground cave found by the landowner, on which he built stairs, hence "hinagdanan" -- for non-Filipinos, "hagdan" means "stairs", so "hinagdanan" translates to something roughly like, "to put stairs in/on".

The next day, we went to the Bohol Bee Farm. This is a fabulous place, and is actually in the running for me for my top ten honeymoon spots, for example if you don't want to spend too much on the honeymoon. There's a bee farm close by, but the area we were in is more of a "front"--there's the "Buzz Shop", with Bolano delicacies and various spreads and stuff, all of which they also sell in the restaurant just a few steps down. There are cabins and small houses which one can rent in the midst of the bee farm garden (again, no bees--the actual bee farm is elsewhere), the most expensive being around P7000++ for a night. Going all the way down, though, there's this fabulous snorkeling spot (pictured here). The water is so clear, so cool, and the scenery is so beautiful. We didn't wade in, but we stood at the steps, and it's absolutely breathtaking.

We spent the rest of the day with my dad's Tagbilaran plant manager et al in Panglao, on the beach. They brought lots of local food, and the beach was fabulous and clean -- it was a really wonderful, relaxing time. Even in the heat, the water was cool. Later on, when the tide was low, we found out why: freshwater rivers on the island emptied out into the sea right there on the beach, so much that you could see tiny geysers of water on the beach's puddles. On puddles without these small holes/geysers, the water was warm, but when the puddles had these geysers (in varying strengths and sizes), the water was cool. I took a video of these geysers but haven't uploaded it yet -- the format's unsupported as I had edited it when I imported it from my camera.

When we got home, it was only then when we realized the real extent of our "tan". It wasn't even a tan--we were quite sunburned! I wanted to get a nice tan, and during the day when we were in the water, langging and I would face the sun (or turn our back to it, depending on what we wanted) and raise our arms above the water in an effort to soak up as much sun as we could. Oh boy, did we soak up a lot. :P

The next morning, we had brunch at the Bohol Bee Farm (since we didn't eat the previous day there). Brunch included salads with flowers in it! Apparently, anything a bee lands on is edible. The flowers were a bit more "leafier" in taste than I cared for--I suppose you could say that they're really just like ordinary green vegetables, but they taste stronger.

After that we went on to our early afternoon flight back to Manila, and the day after that, I flew back to Singapore. :)

( Picture wall of doom! 201 thumbnails of photos from Bohol under the cut. )

So, yes. I'm a quarter of a century old! It doesn't seem possible. Nancy Drew is still older than I am. By at least two years.

Family woke me up around 5:30am to sing Happy Birthday and give me my presents. A couple of books, and cute stuff like mug covers and eyeglass holders. And the cake! It's huge, and pink. I'll have photos up soonish. I'm trying to force myself to finish uploading the Bohol photos to Flickr, after which I can finally put other stuff up. It's just so tedious to add titles, tags, groups, etc to my photos.

We're staying in the rest of the morning, and then go out later this afternoon and the rest of tonight. My vacation's been good so far, but I'll have to get more into it some other time. I did finally find a trade paperback copy of Eclipse though, which I promptly picked up. Finally! Naturally I finished it in one day. I'll have to collect my thoughts on it soon.

I don't feel too much like staying on the computer (mostly because it's rather dusty where I connect to the home network via cable...since nobody has been using this space for the past year!) so this will have to be it. Next December when I go back I'll have to bring a wireless router with me...

Anyone on Plurk? Looks interesting.

My flight is delayed. I am speechless. It's my first time riding on Cebu Pacific and I get a delayed flight! D:

Good thing I got here early enough to get a spot on the Laptop Zone here. And that I did not have any more space in my check-in luggage for my laptop adapter. I'm going to grow roots.

I did that iPersonic personality test, and came up with:

It doesn't describe me all that much, though. I agree with some points but don't with others, for example this one: "However, one cannot expect romance and effusive expressions of feelings from him and he will definitely forget his wedding anniversary." I am very effusive and expressive of my affection if we're talking about family and significant others, and sometimes with close friends if I sense they won't mind (but I find that most are uncomfortable if I get all genki on them). I love making things romantic for special occasions. But, I do forget a lot of birthdays and special events! I usually remember the day before, but on the day itself I'm rather likely to forget about it. It's really sad.

I went through a couple of domain renewal problems, but after a lot of emailing, calling, and general panicking, everything's sorted out now. It will be "really over" in a few days time, as I'm now just waiting for the final stuff to go through. It really scared the wits out of me, though; the .com and .net versions of indisguise.org have domain sitters on them so it's scary to lose that, not to mention the whole problem with it being my primary domain with my nameservers.

But because of all that, I now have a new domain :3 it is a secret for now, but hopefully sometime soon I'll get it up--I wanted to snatch it up quickly because the .com and .net versions of the domain is also taken. It won't be too much of a surprise though; if you know me you might be able to guess what the domain is (especially as I've spoken about it previously, maybe not about the exact domain name but something close to it).

Eeee plane flight tonight at midnight! I'm not yet done packing, although most of my things are ready. This afternoon the Production and Engineering teams are also going on the Singapore Duck Tour XD and I'm looking forward to that. Eee fun!

I'm hungry. I need sustenance.

One more night and I'm off to the Philippines for a week-long vacation! I can't wait. :D This is the first time I'm going to try flying on Cebu Pacific -- previously I've always used JetStar Asia for my flights, but they can be slightly pricier and they have ungodly flight hours (7am, which means you have to be at the airport by 5am). The seats are supposedly more comfortable on JetStar planes, but we'll see how I fare on Cebu Pacific.

I'll be back in Singapore on the 16th, but will be leaving just a few hours later for Hong Kong. Scary! I'll be there for a week with some officemates (who are flying there on Monday, actually) for some training and development for an ongoing project. I have never been to Hong Kong before, and while I've read a bit and I can just hail a cab to get me to the hotel, I'm still scared. I read this bit where you have to have a scrap of paper with your destination's Chinese name on it so that the cab driver knows where to take you. :s Is that true, even if I'm just going to ask to get to my hotel? I'll be flying back to Singapore from Hong Kong on the 21st.

I still have a couple of things to prepare, like final list of clothes, gadget chargers and cables, stuff like that. As usual, I have this nagging feeling that I will forget things, which is horrid. Ayieee. At least I think I have all my shopping done. I think. I feel like I am a chicken with my head cut off. *clucks around madly* (...wait, if I don't have a head anymore, then I can't cluck. Oh, bother.)

I will be missing The PC Show which is sad, but it's all right; I do NOT need more gadgets in my life. I do not. *repeats to self* :D Well, for the moment anyway! I need to save up for our move to a new place in a few months.

I can't believe how fast time flies. In a bit over a month's time, I'll have been here in Singapore for a year already. This time last year, I was stressing about processing my documents and POEA papers, trying to plan out my leaves, and general stressing over where to get the money to actually move to Singapore.

The weekend's drawing to a close, and I can't decide whether I'm okay with that or if I want it to be longer.

Here is a screenshot of my desktop wallpaper. I'm really, really liking the monthly calendar wallpaper series that Smashing Magazine has going; here's the one for June. I like having a nice calendar on my desktop, plus the wallpapers are quite fabulous, like this one. So colorful!

I spent a lot of time working on Enthusiast 4 this weekend, although I also did finally release Enthusiast 3.1.4. I'm rather excited about Enth4, and I feel like I can't code fast enough for it to be done. I can't rush it though, because I only have so much strength and endurance at hand, and because I need to make sure the backend is done as right as I can possibly make it under the circumstances.

I still haven't decided on the UI, so at the moment I'm working with a completely plain page (currently on the Categories page), no images even. Once I've set things down for this page, that's when I'll probably decide on a new look for the admin panel. But even with the rather ugly plain page, it's still exciting :D I realized that with the changes I'm doing, I've lessened the work involved, but unfortunately there's a lot of work to be done anyway, so nothing has changed much. :P

I watched Prince Caspian with friends last Thursday, and finally posted a review of the movie. Lucy and Edmund were fabulous. I think Skandar Keynes/Edmund is rather cute, but he's just three years older than Biel. OMG. I'm old.

I've been slowly uploading Bohol photos on to my Flickr account, although I've only finished Day 3. Two more days to go. It's tedious going through photos and adding comments and titles. That said, I offer you a video of a tarsier eating!! This is so addicting to watch. I never thought tarsiers could be so cute, because I always thought they looked rather... funny. In photos. But after seeing one up close... awww *smushes* and they're especially adorable when they eat.

Go see the video :D You can also hear me talk, albeit in Tagalog. Yes, my voice is that high, apparently. It doesn't sound that high to me, but eh.

Parting shot: this is priceless. "Darth Vader. Only you could be so bold." :D I have that phrase in my head at almost all times now.

I went biking yesterday around Yishun and Khatib, and now my whole body hurts. Since Wednesday, I'd had a bit of a stiff neck, so at the moment everything feels sore -- upper arms, lower arms, thighs, butt, torso, and parts of my neck at certain angles. Ow ow ow. It was a good run though, click on the photo on the left for a closer look + some on-map notes I made.

That's a loooooong way to go. Egads. It's the first time I've tried biking on the sidewalk with a spattering of people passing by, so yay me! I did not run anybody down, thank goodness, although I almost crashed into another bike, and I fell when my bike went down to the grass and I was trying to get back up to the pavement. I've found that I'm really quite jittery -- I lose a bit of balance whenever someone passes by, for example. The amount of balance lost is proportional to how much I was surprised at the person/thing passing by.

I had also meant to play badminton with Faye et al again yesterday, but after the strenuous biking, I wasn't up to it. Thank goodness I didn't go, otherwise I'm sure I'd have ended up a vegetable today. So I went to watch Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull instead!

Since the first time I saw the original three movies, I was still too much of a kid to remember anything logical about the movies, I watched all three before I went to watch this one. I commented to a friend that the movies were pretty dated, but he laughed and said that of course they are! Which is yes, they should be :P

The movies are all quite enjoyable, although I still prefer Harrison Ford's Han Solo over Indy. I realize that Indy is supposed to be something like James Bond, only more academic and fallible, but I suppose I didn't care too much about Indy romancing every woman he meets--okay, not "every woman he meets", but all the leading ladies. I know they're leading ladies, but, yeah. I am such a prude. :P

I liked the fourth movie, but I suppose I would have liked it better if I also liked the first three better. It's rather entertaining, but if Harrison Ford wasn't there, I think I wouldn't have liked it much (bias, much?). Cate was fabulous and beautiful as always. I wonder though, if Lucas's hand in the movie made it turn out worse, ala the Star Wars prequels. I know Lucas is... brilliant sometimes, but the prequels were pretty bad, and the fourth Indy film wouldn't have been great if it wasn’t for Harry and the previous three movies.

I'm sleepy. Off to sleep!

Edietd to add: This is a good Indy 4 review--I personally agree with a lot of it, but quite particularly his comments on Harrison Ford. <3

For a while now I've been tracking my finances electronically. I started in earnest when I moved to Singapore (since I rendered a pauper by my move and quite in debt then) but because (annoyingly) GnuCash wouldn't export my transactions into a format readable by other applications (they only export accounts; what do I care about accounts, I need transaction history!), when I made the move to using Macs, I lost all transactions for the last year.

All in all, however, I'm liking managing my finances this way. There is a lot less clutter that I have to deal with, almost everything gets thrown in the trash, except for:

- receipts for big items and gadgets under warranty, or those that can get reimbursed because of company benefits/expense
- bank statements
- bills for stuff like credit cards, mobile phone plans
- pay slips, tax stuff, etc
- official documents like birth certificates, registrations, contracts, etc

All of the above fits in a 2.5" organizer, in a couple of folders color-coded according to what documents are inside: white for official, informational stuff like birth certificates; green for income and bank accounts; red for expenses (two folders! sob); blue for memberships; purple for investments.

Today I came across this paperless finance system post, which is really interesting to me. I'd love less clutter, and it won't be too much work on top of what I already do. (Plus, uhm, it gives me a reason to buy a scanner... *ducks*) Basically, when you receive bills/etc, you scan in the bill/statement/etc, convert to PDF, and then shred the piece of paper (to guard against identity theft).

Only I'm a little hesitant about actually doing all that, mostly for stuff like pay slips, contracts, and government-issued things like birth certificates and tax stuff, as you will tend to need these things when applying for stuff like permanent residency, or even new credit cards and financial stuff (in the case of pay slips). I understand that they usually only need photocopies, which a nice printout of the PDFs will do, but sometimes I believe they also need to take a look at the originals. Not having those on hand is an inconvenience, coupled with the difficulty (sometimes) of getting these things from the Philippine government... (not to mention, I need a printer for all that!)

There's also the issue of, what if someone cracks into my computer, it's so easy to get all my financial data after that! I suppose, being a relatively tech-savvy person, I'm more prone to cracking scares rather than physical stealing. Huh.

Well, when my bills folder end up getting clunky, I'll probably start not-storing paper bills as well. For the moment I suppose I'm good with my system. :)

Snatched from pirate_nami. I would post this in Seasonal Plume, but it's a rather long list.

Below are the top 106 books tagged “unread” in Librarything.

The rules:
Bold what you have read, italicize books you’ve started but couldn’t finish, and strike through books you hated. Add an asterisk* to those you’ve read more than once. Underline those on your TBR list.

The ones I loved, I added a bang (!). The ones I underlined are those that are hopefully going to get read within the year, as I already have the books for them, I just haven't started.

( Read more... )

I went with Carol to e-life at Suntec after work today, and I saw my longed-for Cintiq 12WX on display at Epicentre.

Zomgwanttehshiny!

I am in love. Okay, it's a little annoying that they have the pen on mouse mode (seriously people, why the hell do you get a pen tablet just to treat it like an ordinary mouse?!) so I couldn't give it a proper run, but I'll try to go to Orchard over the weekend and see if the Epicentre branch there has one on display as well. And hope that they have it on mouse mode, that the people are more friendly so that I can pepper them with questions. I love it, oh how I love it, it sings my name!

Salespeople are so annoying. When you want them to stay away, they stay right there by your side, but when you need them around, they act bored and look at you as if you're annoying them with questions.

I stumbled on a particular post in suggestions (I won't say which, but it's not new) and wow, some people love drama. I see lj staff commenting on suggestions post, being quite up front and clear about limitations their system has, and some people just keep slamming them. What's annoying is even when they get somewhat technical, and say exactly why there are limitations in place, said people still slam them. These people are obviously non-techies and don't understand how some stuff work, and they keep making it out like the lj team is just pulling the wool over their eyes.

Granted, I know LJ has messed a lot of things up recently. Yes, I know I have paid dearly for these services which mess things up sometimes, and yes, I know they "owe" me that (too bad permanent users can't have stuff like, extended paid time :P). But some people are just plain... ANNOYING!

I probably wouldn't be as annoyed if it weren't for the fact that said lj user has their panties in a twist about a plausible technical limitation.

As I posted yesterday, I finally settled on and finished a new Scripts.Indisguise.Org layout! This has been long overdue, and I went through three layouts before finally saying close to "ah whatever, I just want a new layout!" and used the last one. :D;;

Things I like about this redesign:

- Geneva! I am currently in love with this sans serif font. I'm using it everywhere (here, eveningsky). I degrade to the Lucida family then Arial, which everyone should have.

- PNG letter-backgrounds. Those artsy letters on the menu, script boxes, and next/previous buttons? They all use just one big-ish sprite with those pretty letters.

- Re-thinking the sidebar and footers. This was something I thought long about. Which stuff to include in the sidebar, which stuff should be in the footer. I realized I didn't really need the recent comments. I realized I needed to include a "face" on the homepage. I realized I needed to say what my blog is about. I realized my scripts should have better visibility. I realized I shouldn't exactly be providing a way to have people easily contact me when I'm insisting that Enth support posts should be at the forum (maybe 80% of the emails I get are about that :P). And so on and so forth.

So, yay for the Scripts.Indisguise.Org redesign!

It's almost midnight, so I'm off to bed. If you see anything amiss... let me know. :P

Whenever I'm home this weekend, I seem to be mucking about somewhere on LJ. I just put up new layouts on angelamaria and eveningsky, both from thefulcrum. I'd been putting off creating layouts for both because I wanted to do something by myself, but I've succumbed to the sad fact that I don't have the luxury of time... and frankly, I should focus on my other websites first. In any case, I feel much better about the layouts, and finally I've re-added the list of community filters I have -- definitely makes LJ browsing much easier.

I also put up a bunch of icons (a lot of old ones I never got around to posting) at eveningsky, with a lot of them being BSSM-related. I did a new batch of Twilight icons, although they mostly only revolve around the promo stills of the Cullens. Eh, such a lack of pretty images to choose from. I did my first icon tutorial though, on someone's request, which was an interesting experience. :D

Lastly... Livejournal Aquarium is really nifty. But how funny, I see spam! There are spam ljs now?

I've realized I lack a lot of icons. I have missed making icons! Not that I'm making some right now, but I miss sitting down and churning icon after icon. The Pride and Prejudice movie snarky icons set was very enjoyable -- I might return to that.

On that note... do any of you guys who have icon journals do affiliating and stuff like that? I've been thinking of looking for icon journal affiliates for some time now, but I've always put it off. My icon journal is at eveningsky if anyone's interested. :)

Where would one go if they're looking for Twilight-related images? And Heroes-related images? :D

Anyway, let's see now. I need icons for:

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Those are some stuff I talk about/are interested in, and I have far too many icon spaces available. Hrrrm. How do you guys fill it up, or manage it, even? I mean, that's possibly a hundred icons...

I finished reading New Moon. Two books, two days, after a week of not being able to sleep 'til the wee hours of the morning. Huh. I'm probably anemic already. I should really sleep sometime... let's hope I have better luck this week.

I'm debating about whether I can hold off on getting Eclipse. As I was telling littletendrils, I was able to get the first two because I saw them finally in trade paperbacks. I was looking for them in the Philippines when I went home (books are generally cheaper there) but they were out of stock. I was at Kinokuniya Books looking for something else, and on a whim I went to look for the Twilight books, and yay! So I bought them.

Eclipse is still in hardback, so I didn't get it. I hope they release in in trade paperback, in the same edition. :D I'm a stickler for getting things in a series in the same edition.

So, thoughts! I will probably be processing things continuously for a few more days -- it also depends on if I will spoil myself by looking at Wikipedia/the Intarwebz for information, even if it might contain Eclipse information. I generally fare better in the not-getting-spoiled department when it comes to books, though, so yeah.

I'll put stuff under a cut to save you if you don't want to be spoiled/read book thoughts and ideas I've been thinking about as an offshoot of reading the books.

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It is almost 2am and I'm groggy, but I bought Stephenie Meyer's Twilight early this afternoon. I have juuuust put it down. I love it. I feel drunk and intoxicated from it. Tomorrow I will go through the whole book again, that is, if I can hold off on starting with New Moon.

I can't be trusted to be coherent at 2am in the morning so I will reserve my thoughts. But I wanted to get that bit in. So glad I picked it up.

Okay I'm falling asleep on my keyboard. Yes, I will need to reread the last few chapters at least. I might be half asleep reading the last chapters, as I hadn't had a good night's sleep in a week. I'd be asleep earlier if it wasn't for the book.

I love it! Hahaha, Bella is such a klutz, and man do I relate to that. :P

Okay I really need to sleep now.

Zzz.

(<3!!)

Just a general PSA for those who have Macs, y'all might be interested in the MacUpdate Promo bundle going on right now. Like the MacHeist bundle, it's a set of Mac applications selling cheaper as a bundle, with a few getting unlocked after a number of bundles have been sold.

The current MacUpdate bundle includes Hazel, Art Text, MenuCalendarClock, Leap, StoryMill, Typinator, and DVDRemaster Pro. Sound Studio, BannerZest, and Parallels Desktop (!!) will be unlocked when bundle selling reaches certain thresholds.

I'm personally interested in Hazel, MenuCalendarClock, Story Mill, Typinator, DVDRemaster Pro, and Parallels, so I'll probably grab one later tonight or over the weekend. ;)