(I’ve Had) The Time Of My Life March 2, 2010

Or not.

Did February just pass me by? How could a whole month (well, 28 days at least) be over without a post from me?

I’ve always said it was way better to be busy than bored, because if you were bored, you’d just end up looking for something to be busy with.  But maybe I should have been a little more specific in quantifying the kind of “busy” I wanted — the kind of busy that didn’t involve panic and pressure, the kind that didn’t have frustrations and fatigue… where there’s no hassles and hurrying and the ending would be perfect and everybody is happy.  Of course it’s not a perfect world and you simply can’t please everybody — and that’s the kind of “busy” I got last February.

Well, March has rolled in and most of the tasks in my “things to do” has been ticked off as done — finally, I’ve relaxed and de-stressed a bit, made amends in errors here and there. So what’s left to do is tell you all about it, briefly if I could manage.

1. Tiffany is HOME! And so is Uncle Surf.

After 4 months, our Serena is home from the casa (with my Mama having to cough up peso bills from her secret handbag.) With that huge service cost, we expected the best care. With Nissan Gallery loaded with cars to fix, they probably only concentrated on the running condition of the car and its mechanisms. We were initially disappointed seeing caked mud still on some parts of the car’s front panel. Also with them not cleaning our leather seat covers that was left tied up in a garbage bag and they’re no good now. But despite a few setbacks, the engine’s running definitely better than before, the aircon’s great, the cloth panels along the car doors are finally spotless, we’re just overjoyed to have Tiffany at home.

My stress is in the getting re-oriented with the Serena — parking, controls, size and width. Plus the watching out for its performance, in case it needed to be sent back to the Gallery. Enter Uncle Tic’s Toyota HiLux (Surf edition)! Another car to drive is a whole new ballgame of calculations and adjustments, gassing up and over-all feel. And it’s not like it’s an easy car to drive too! We are its new caretakers for now and Mama has been dealing with the repairs. In the meantime, I get to use it. Now that’s both good and bad because it runs on diesel but it steers like a bump car!

2. DLSP Multi-Sectoral Congress & CENTRO

Our office was tapped to document the proceedings of this two-part congress.  The first was held at school, the second at De La Salle Araneta University.  Four of us headed off with the rest of the school reps, sort of like a field trip. It was one long day and we kept ourselves busy, and found things to laugh about all throughout the day. But I knew that coming up with the collated responses and summary of reports was no laughing matter long after the participants have gone home and back to their own schools (with the congress possibly a distant memory by then.)

Here’s the stressing fact — as of today, I’m still not done with the report and it will be a month overdue by next week!

3. FusionWorks for Westmont with Jigger

As a production coordinator for my friends’ events company, a day was spent at Manila Diamond working at the sidelines of a huge scavenger hunt game. The task was simple but demanded for you to be on your toes, alive, alert, awake and enthusiastic. At the end of the day, you’re happy with the paycheck, but not about your aching feet.

4. CLP Lion Dance @ Upper Field

For the first time, the LSGH community were treated to a lion dance and wushu performance by the Philippine Ling Nam Athletic Association, under grand master and chief instructor William Soon.  It was all over in 15 minutes, yet the preparations felt like 15 hours!

Early morning panic is not good for my weight — I have a tendency to over-eat when I get tired!

5. CLP Spring Festival for Group A and Groups B/C

Spring Festival is more popularly known as Chinese New Year, this year falling on February 14. We had our annual alternative classroom activity celebration for our Chinese students of course — complete with balloons as firecrackers, gold candy coins as prizes, dumpling ingredients for demonstration, actual dumplings and tikoy for eating, ice, cups and water for drinking. There’s invitations, program of activities, cheque requests, gathering of materials, powerpoint presentation to check, letter to parents to prepare — did I miss anything?! Oh, we had to run the activity twice, for two separate group of students.

Another activity that lasted 2 whole hours that felt like 2 whole days on your feet!

6. Lianne’s 1st Birthday @ Jollibee Alabang

Because Papa J and Mommy Gigi now reside all the way in Batangas, I just had to make this trip. I already missed her baptism last year. Plus of course, they’re my edsoc4ever friends and I used to be “part” of this family (as a REVO passenger.) Good thing I wasn’t double-booked on this day.  The only initial concern was this party was on a Saturday, 1-3:30PM all the way south and…

7. Godric’s 1st Birthday @ Palmdale Pasig

… from Alabang, I had to drive down EDSA and straight to party no. 2, 3:30-6PM.  It would have been a “fun”-ner party for me if I got to jump in the pool with baby Godric. Unfortunately, it’s that time of the month (did I really have to say that aloud?)  Oh what a bummer. Food was good, the company’s great, Mommy Clarck really throws cool parties! Too bad I couldn’t stay on longer to sing the night away… now that would have been a blast! Still, “thank you for watching!“

8.  Rafael’s 7th Birthday @ SM Storyland Fairview

For the second Saturday in a row, off I went to yet another birthday party, this time to the northside in faraway “Far”view. Because they’re also edsco4ever friends, attendance was a must. For a treat, I brought A with me to the party. Come to think of it, we also went to Rafael’s 1st birthday party 7 years ago!

It was fun, even if the mini-rider cosmic ride left me dizzy! What was stressful was the domestic drama waiting for us when we got home. Woopsie.

9. CLP Culminating Activity

Ah… where do I begin? To tell the story of this yearly energy-draining yet all-rewarding activity? No more CLP secretary to share the work with and with frequent disagreements with a certain Lao Shi, it was a long list of “to dos.” From reservations to certificates, ordering medals and printing class cards, fixing the mp3s to a cd and arranging the order of performances, arranging for the supervisors’ transportation and thinking of feeding the boys, dry-sealing at the Personnel’s Office at 3PM, printing judging forms, letters and invitations to parents, principals and other guests — and for extra challenge, we had a video message to play but we didn’t plan on having an LCD so do I make a PPT to make use of the laptop and LCD? And during the program, a mom was early yet his son was missing from the opening song line-up so I had to go looking for him. Good save by Ms. Tilit and my printed script. And did I mention my sister and family was in the audience? The best consolation was that the ala-Activity Day plan worked (have a contest instead of the usual straight performances) and it was rather enjoyable, if I could say so myself. I’m just happy we pulled it off, with much less glitches this year!

10. Green, Gold, Beyond @ the Gym

And the piece de resistance (feeling French), was getting onboard the Golden Jubilee play. Now this was a difficult and emotional task.  There were too many confusing commands and demanding demands that left us confused and dizzy. We wanted to do a good job but it wasn’t our show to run. We wanted to have our say, but it was best to just shut it. It was one heck of a learning curve in our surprisingly still growing brain. In the end, it was a bittersweet moment watching the musical thrice and remembering all the things far and between!

On the plus side though, working with Jamie is always cool, but working with Jigger was beyond super cool! On the minus side though, through all these frenzy, my E71 phone had to act up — it didn’t want to send messages and had to be reformatted! Gosh. Anyway…

To wind things down, of course there were a couple of other fun things I got to squeeze in the already busy month — I saw 2 movies, had 2 separate farewell dinners with Anet and Carol, Ash Wednesday mass with Aori, Starbucks and Hagen Daaz sessions with Jules, new TV shows to watch (A.I., Amazing Race and One Tree Hill,) a special holiday, Sunday masses at St. Pio Center with Mama, visits to Dra. Glenda, my dentist and weekend home massages with Ate Rline. Oh what pure joy!

Just as the month ended, so should I end this post.

I survived it. I’m glad its over. With the patience of those around me and the providence from above. February may only have 28 days, yet it seemed like forever. From the picture above, the bottom right pic shows this month is the start of the year of the tiger — my birth year — and I suppose I could say it is off to a roaring start. And what a start indeed! : )

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