The Present

"Everyday is a gift; which is why it is called The Present."

Birthday or not, everyday is something to be thankful to God for.  So I made it a practice to thank Him for every waking hour of my life---and not only during my birthday.

As soon as I open my eyes every morning is a brand new day!  Everyday is a PRESENT!  And then I look around and I immediately see all the special add ons to this I call MY LIFE:  my wife, my children, my family.  Of course there's also the fact that I wake up in the comfort of my bed with a roof over my head.  And then the rest of all that makes my life special come rolling in:  my friends, my work, the opportunities, even the challenges that come my way---especially those that makes me become a better person. 

Man, it has been 44 years since the day I first got myself a whiff of the goodness of being!

Life is always good!  It's just a matter of perspective.

Thank you Lord for LIFE!

What To Do When You Have a Bad Boss

First and foremost, there is no way of skirting the fact that there ARE bad bosses around.  From the littlest to the biggest companies, it is assured that there are these high and almighty who think of themselves as gods or those lazy ones who did nothing but delegate all the hard work, get credit for the accomplishments, and gallivant to their heart's desire . There is no escaping them.

I have had my share of these types, luckily, not many of them.

Being under someone who does not live up to the true meaning of a leader can be emotionally draining.  I mean thinking about the unfair situation you're in will surely suck up all the positive in you.

Well, there are a couple of things you can do:
1.  Pack your bags and find another job.  Unfortunately, there is no assurance that the next job you find you will not be under the same jerk of a boss.
2.  Be your own boss.  If you have the money to invest, build your own company---and make sure that you don't become the same kind of boss that you hate.
3.  Stick around and let karma takes its course.  Well, finding a job can be a challenge these days.  So if you're already in a company where you are have security of tenure, you would be better off just sucking it up  and do what your job expects you to do.  Eventually karma will catch up to those who did you bad.

Just Wondering...

After the outpouring of public sympathy in the passing of the Philippines' Comedy King it makes you wonder how the turnout will be when life's curtain  finally go down on yours.  I guess it all boils down to how many lives you've positively touched in your lifetime.  

People don't forget how you made them feel.  It is also important to pay it forward.  We have all been in tight situations before and hardships that we needed help financially, emotionally, and spiritually.  Give when the opportunity presents itself.  Giving a piece of your mind or lending an ear to someone else's problems goes a long way.  

So, have you lived a life worth remembering?

Life Lessons from a Taxi Ride Home

There's nothing perfect in life.  Sometimes we do get a slice of the sweet life but even that wouldn't give us that perfect piece of heaven.  Riding a cab is a good example of this.

I already mentioned i a previous blog about my preference in riding new taxis.  Unfortunately, not all new taxis offer the same kind of luxury and value for money.  This evening I decided to ride a taxi home from my visit to my balikbayan sister in Makati.  The doorman at the Ascott Hotel was kind enough to hail one for me and my entourage and I specifically told him to choose a new one.  Well, he did hail a new looking cab but the aircon was not as cold as we want it to be.  The problem is you can't bitch about it given the different strategies that taxi drivers employ to earn and manage the roller coaster pricing of fuel---cutting on the aircon thermostat being one of them.  Personally, I'm just thankful that God did not give me that challenge in life.  So I just sat there, kept my cool and eagerly awaited our arrival home.  On the flipside however, if you're the driver, don't fault me for not tipping you for the ride.  If I don't feel I got my money's worth, I will not give a TIP.

Remembering Shiela Marie Advincula

I was multi-tasking this morning (like I normally do)---cooking breakfast and surfing the web---when out of curiosity I had this narcissistic urge to Google my name.  Well, most of the hits pointed me to my blog site but there was this site, melanieuchi.multiply.com, that apparently mentioned my name.  Apparently, it was a rollcall of sorts with a bunch of other names (a couple of which were officemates) and then I realized that it was the blog site of the aunt of a former officemate's nephew who had bone cancer.  She made a blog to thank those who contributed for her niece's chemotherapy way back in 2007. 

Her last post was dated November 26, 2007 and I wanted to think that the date did not mean the worst of thoughts.  Unfortunately, it was.  Her name was Sheila Marie Advincula---SM for short---and she was 10 years old when God took her to become one of His angels.

The blog site contained  pictures of SM during the various stages of her treatment and I found it ironic that there's this little girl suffering from a debilitating form of cancer still able to smile while other people sulk and curse with their petty problems. 

Sheila Marie may not have lived to enjoy a full life but she left us with a lifetime lesson that our existence is how we choose it to be and no matter the circumstance that we find ourselves in---it's all a matter of how we want to deal with it.  Life is a CHOICE.   

May eternal light shine upon our beloved SM oh Lord and may she rest in peace.

It's a wonder how SM can still smile given her situation...

Burning Bush No More

In this day and age, God no longer has the luxury of burning bushes to talk to his people---lest He wanted to get someone locked up for arson.

God is omnipresent. He is in everyone and everything. He has is Divine Hand in every situation and every event. Hence, when we speak to God during our prayers His answer can be as subtle as the falling of a leaf. The thing is we need to be a believer of His presence for us to be able to catch on to what He is telling us.

I do believe that there is no such thing as consequences. Consequences are God's anonymous interventions in our lives. He can answer our prayers through your friends, family members, co-workers, and even your scheming enemy. The thing is, God does not provide solutions to our problems. He gives us options. In the end---everything will be in our hands. Free will, remember?

However, our relationship with God should not be forged only during times of crisis. He should not just play the helpdesk to our troubles but more importantly He should be the guide in our lives.

Life is not meant to be perfect but everyday is a gift which is why it is called the present. Have faith that God is always watching over us. In each of our burden He walks with us and lifts us up every time we falter. Little that we know---He carries us most of the time.

When my wife and I got married 20 years ago, God blessed us with two children in the first 4 years of our life together, John Paul George aka Ringo and Francesca Camille. We thought that we already had a perfect set up---one boy and one girl. However, when our relationship matured, God was so happy he vested upon us what He did to Adam and Eve and said, "Go forth and MULTIPLY!" So 6 years after Chesca was born, my wife and I went into a reproductive overdrive from which were borne 4 more offsprings: Carl Joseph (1998), Gillian Colleen (2001), Timothy Allen (2006), and Justin (2008). It all happened so fast that they were there before I could say REPORDUCTIVE HEALTH! But God is really good because He did provide my family our basic needs when needed. Anyway...

My baby boy Ringo is now going on 20 years old and my baby girl, Chesca, is 18 years old today. How time flies, doesn't it? Before, I was only tossing the two of them in the air, now, if I attempt to do that I'd probably end up paralyzed...well actually, depending on what order I might just do that---if i toss Ringo first then I guess I'd be dead!-lol

A Lenten Thought

I have always thought that lent is the most boring holiday ever! During my earlier years, it was four days of doing nothing. There were only five channels during that time and all of them sign off during this time of the year. My mother was a strict Catholic and we were not allowed to play either. Well, we'd pray the rosary and go to church but you can only do so much of that when you're young and adrenaline filled. Those were the days...

Now, there's cable, PSP, Nintendo, DVD and internet. I still pray yes, but now there's more things to while the time with. Now I wonder---did it really become better? Before, you had no choice but to think about God; now God seemed to have been put in the backseat for other hedonistic enterprise.

I will not point fingers for I am a prey to these pagan rituals myselt---guilty beyond reasonable doubt! Heck, I was in a "Spartacus" marathon just a while ago!

So let me call on all of you reading this blog to just pause for a while and think of everything that we have done so far to deserve this precious gift called LIFE. Well, I did it a while ago and was hard fought in capturing only a handful. What about you?

Live Happy!

How many times must it be said that LIFE is NEVER PERFECT.

For those already well off (with that I mean those who has a job, lives in a house, and eat three square meals a day), life can only be made BETTER.

I really find it amusing to hear rich people bitch about their life. Don’t they realize that millions of people would gladly exchange places with them without even batting an eyelash?

We are a product of our choices. We are subjected to difficult situations for us to overcome them. If you choose to fold to these obstacles then you must learn to adapt and deal with the card you’re dealt with. Don’t blame anyone else. Don’t blame God---He only provides assistance to those who try to help themselves. Blame yourself.

The only PERFECT LIFE is the AFTER LIFE---but that’s only after you’ve lived a good life on this earth; otherwise…let’s just say, “Eternal life can never be hotter!”

Life can only be as perfect as we want it to be. If there is nothing that can be done to make better your life, the only thing that can be done is to find CONTENTMENT with what you have. Longing for something that you don’t have the capacity to get will only make your life miserable.

Choose to be HAPPY!

The Hard or Harder Way?

Living life is NOT easy!

From the very beginning, a struggle happens between millions of sperms jockying to penetrate a single egg! Coming out of our mother's womb is even more traumatic! So if you're thinking that life is a FREE ride to Nirvana---you're ABSOLUTELY WRONG!

Now that we've cleared that up, there are two ways on how to go about and making life worth living---the HARD WAY or the HARDER WAY.

The hard way is by LISTENING to the "boring" rantings of your parents. These consists of life experiences that they have gone through which is often preceded by the phrase, "Noong bata pa ako..." Of course, these tales of love, heartaches, difficulties, challenges, trials, success, and triumphs can be daunting to hear since you will be given the reality of life's difficulties. Those who were open to listen and learn basically were given a road map to avoid the rough road. Of course, the fact remains that this journey will be long and filled with challenges!

The HARDER WAY is shunting the councel of your parents and doing things on your own. This would mean that you will make your own mistakes, go through the process of standing up again and hopefully learn from the experience. Many young men and women have chosen to go through this path and apparently, learning from past failures seem to be a very rare commodity! These people almost always end up as BUMS!

May it be hard or the harder way, EDUCATION is a big part of any life plan. If you think that you can just breeze through school and get your dream job---DING! DING! DING!---you're wrong again! The quality by which you went about your life as a student will most often than not determine the job offers that you get. Note: Mediocrity is not a value that any company looks for in an employee!

Planning your life is not just a matter of knowing what you wnat to be. The key engredient to finding success in life is knowing what you want, knowing what needs to be done, and then actually doing it!

Life

Life by Carlos Macarayan(1996)

Life is but a phase
A state of being
In Love...
In Pain...
In Trepidation...
The ephemeral circumstance
Of feeling...
Struggling...
Striving...
To make a difference
In this abstract existence...

Quid Pro Quo

In other words, "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours."

People often times forget that in any relationship there should be give and take. Often times the narcissist in us prevails and we focus only on what we can take from others. This is bad karma!

Being in the customer service business this Latin phrase have proven itself countless times as I deal with both internal and external customers.

Leading a project involves inter-department and vendor coordination. As such, it is important that you have a good working relationship with them, otherwise, support will be a very rare commodity for you---and your project---is doomed from the start!

Striking a smooth working relationship with other people entails a lot of giving and less of the taking. This like saving for a rainy day. The more you give, the more emotional bank load you invest. This way whenever you are on the negotiating table there is always a compromise to all conflicts and the willingness to arrive at a win-win solution.

Be Happy!

The most important component in finding true happiness is ACCEPTANCE.

This may seem to be a simple process but it is actually easier said than done. If you experience a nagging difficulty in any aspect of your life---it's likely that the cause of this problem is the failure to accept reality as it is.

There are certain things in life that we can change like job, address, haircut, girlfriend, boyfriend. However, there will be times when we cannot just change them on a whim. If you don't like your boss you don't just quit and say good riddance! Finding a job is hard nowadays. Your current house may not be as plush as you want it to be but do you have enough financial excess to move out and buy a new one? Or, you wanted to have a mohawk style hairdo but if you have a receding hairline like Bruce Willis there wouldn't be much hair to style. What I'm saying is---in order to be happy in life you should find contentment with what you have.

Resentment is a disease that eats up the soul! If you have an abundance of resentment in your heart there can never be room for happiness!

I cannot tell you what to do. All I can say is---IT'S NOT A GOOD FEELING TO BE RESENTFUL! So, I chose to be happy! Try it! You may find it worthwhile doing!