Foggy or Smoggy?

Although it wasn’t very cloudy today, for most of the morning the city (or at least the part visible from our office) seemed to be coated in a layer of fog.  I’m sure that some it was the normal smog you’d expect from a city this size, but I think some of it was brought by the relatively lower temperatures we’ve been experiencing for most of the morning.  From experience, I expected it to rain, even a little, which is exactly what happened as my shift ended, as I was walking towards the nearby MRT station.

The rain made for a relatively cooler afternoon of course, and helped me ease into my afternoon siesta when I got home.  Gosh did I feel drained.  The stress of my job aside, the fact that my QC scores seemed to be faltering this month really adds to the pressure to not screw up even further.  Ugh, I suppose there’s no way to get those points for this month, which is a shame since I haven’t missed a single day of work yet.

As for the issue I mentioned yesterday, I withdrew some money, with the express purpose of giving it to my cousin to buy groceries.  Given my sleep schedule, it’s very likely I won’t be able to wake up early enough do marketing myself… Though if my sister is right, and my father’s flight arrives later, then it’ll be a non-issue, since he’ll probably go to the market instead.  Of course he’ll badger me to come along (likely for the express purpose of having an additional pair of hands to carry stuff!), but we’ll just have to see. 

See if I can even get up that is, ahaha.

Since it’s my off day tomorrow, obviously I’m going to have to do some reviewing for Saturday’s class. With classes suspended last week, it’ll likely be a brutal session of catch-up, knowing the professor involved.  Hmm.  You know, I still don’t know what I’m supposed to lecture about.  Have to look into that.

And my plans for the weekend? Ah, well, the usual gaming aside, I’d like to finish that drawing project I started this Summer, but had to put on hold due to the onset of classes, and my recent bingeing on Guild Wars.  Running Puellae Magi, ahaha.  Yeah, it’s silly, but I wanted to try this long pic of the characters of the Madoka Magica megaverse (which means including the characters from Oriko Magica and Kazumi Magica) running after Kyubey.  

The only problem though is that nor all of them at this point have color-schemes; the Magic Girl extras at the end of Episode 12 aside, I think only Yuma, Kazumi, Umika, and Kaoru have color schemes assigned to them. I suppose that I could just make do with line-art for now, but still, it wouldn’t feel right without colors, even if just flats…

Eh, I suppose this weekend isn’t going to be as boring as I’d thought.

Echoing Spaces

It’s that time of the month again. That time when the fridge seems to be, well, mostly empty.  Even the freezer, which normally would be filled with all sorts of frozen stuff was mostly bare.  Ugh.  I keep on forgetting that, without my father here, I’m supposed to contribute money to buy food.  The thing is my funds have been so tight lately that it kind of slipped my mind.

Well, time to remedy that. 

Startling Lack of Energy

As the title of this journal entry says, I’ve been experiencing an unusual lack of energy since the start of this week.  While I’m sure that part of it was due to my bingeing on Guild Wars during the weekend — for the curious, I went and earned the Canthan Skill Hunter, Survivor, Elonian Skill Hunter, and Legendary Skill Hunter titles, in that order, over the course of little over twenty-four hours, minus sleep time and the time I had to go to work on Sunday — part of it is also due to the lack of enough sleep.  

And this isn’t due to my occasional bouts of insomnia either, or brought by over-watching my downloaded anime backlog, oh no…  I’ve been experiencing nagging back aches for the past few days, particularly the area around my left shoulder and my lower back, and it’s making it really hard to get comfortable enough to fall asleep.  It’s gotten to the point where it’s nearly impossible to lie on my back for an extended period.  

I understand that I’m not getting any younger, and that stuff like this should be expected of a person my age, but for the problems to appear over the course of a few days is worrying.  If things don’t ease up soon, I might have to get a check-up at my doctor.  This might turn out to be something a simple backrub could ease, after all.

A Little Selfishness

My back was aching for most of my shift, particularly that area just above my gluteus maximus.  It’s no wonder I couldn’t concentrate (much) on the calls I was receiving, as it just added to the stiff shoulders I normally experience. It wasn’t a nice feeling, really.

So I decided that it was time for a bit of selfishness on my part.  As soon as I got off work, and after a short detour to my bank to deposit the pay I got on Saturday (what little there is…), I headed straight to the beauty spa I normally frequented and treated myself to the first full-body massage that I’d had in a while.  God knows I needed it.

After that, well, let’s just say that I tuned out for the rest of the afternoon as soon as I got home.

Ponderous Points

There are just those days that are so mundane that, really, I have nothing of note to talk about.  Today is one of those.  Just your average, slow Sunday.  Well aside from the fact that one of my uncles, who’s a seaman, is leaving tomorrow, so some of his barkada among the neighbors are throwing him a going-away party. Which means lots of beer, and badly-sung karaoke late into the evening.  And you wonder why I retreated to my room as soon as it started this noon.

As my habit, I gamed a bit, but as soon as I started yawning it was straight to bed for an afternoon nap… Which was unfortunately cut short because of a brownout.  Yeah, I didn’t enjoy waking up drenched in sweat, let me tell you.  So you’d excuse me if I turned on the A/C as soon as the power came back on.  It was that hot.

Unfortunately I couldn’t go back to sleep… which brings me to what I’m doing now.  Basically just a continuation of last night: catching up on this week’s crop of shows.

Definitely one of those lazier weekends.

That said… I was able to get that Legendary Survivor. Finally.  I’m pretty much broke, since I took advantage of the Elite Capture weekend to cap elites for double the experience gain, which in some ways made the journey from Tier 2 to the final tier much easier.  Oh well, at least I won’t worry anymore about dying and resetting the damned title!

Yeah, I’m a little shallow that way.  Hmm… It says that I have 10 elites left uncaptured in Elona.  I wonder…

Not Much Comfort

Much like yesterday, it’s been raining for the good part of the day.  Although it wasn’t as bad as yesterday, it was still enough for my professor to SMS everyone that we won’t be having any class.  That was very sensible of him, though this means we’ll likely have to play catch up with our lessons, as we’ll be short a day.  I’m sure the class will manage somehow though.

As a result of this, I was able to veg out at home.  That meant being in front of the PC for a good chunk of the morning and afternoon (NEET mode on?) either watching some of the anime I wasn’t able to view this week, or playing games.  It was mostly the latter though, with myself doing some quests I’d normally never attempt on my own.  All that work for an exotic spider animal companion that could be displayed on the Hall of Monuments…  That was nerve-wracking, especially since I was also working towards the last tier of the Survivor track.  Earning the next 500k+ experience points will be nerve-wracking, to say the least.

Speaking of the Survivor track, incidentally it’s double-experience for Elite Captures weekend. Depending on the capture area, that’s a relatively easy way to get experience.  Too bad I don’t have enough cash for the Signets of Capture though.  Oh well.

The downpour finally let up mid-afternoon though, which gave me the opportunity to run out and withdraw my pay from one of the nearby ATMs. I mean, it was my payday after all.  It wouldn’t have made any sense not taking out the money, right?

Of course, since the street outside was flooded, I was forced to be creative with the path I took to the bank.  After all these years though, I’m used to the area’s flooding patterns, so I was able to get to the ATM and back without having to wader through the brackish floodwater.  Ugh.

With the end of the rain, it’s back to normal for tomorrow I guess.  But I think I’ll bring an umbrella.  Just in case.

Heaven’s Curtain

It’s really been pouring today.  The rain has literally not let up since I woke up this morning, and even when there’s a brief pause it’ll eventually start up again before long.  It pretty much stopped my plan to drop by the campus this afternoon and, with expected flooding of the neighborhood (the path leading out of the apartment is at least ankle-deep), my sister’s stranded at home as well.  This makes it the second straight day she’s not been able to go to work, which just shows just how bad things are; she never misses work.

I can’t imagine how it is in the places directly hit by the typhoon, where I’m very sure flooding is the least of peoples’ worries.  All I can do is hope that the damage isn’t so bad that it’ll take a while to recover before the next storm hits.  Such is the peril of a country experiencing the monsoon season, all the while being in the Typhoon Belt.

If there’s anything positive to come out of this, it’s the cool evenings the rain brings, and even then it’s not much comfort, especially for those people who’ve either lost their homes to the flood, or are stranded in places they really don’t want to be for the night. Like on top of a coconut tree that’s in danger of being blown over by the strong wind…

As for what I was doing while stuck at home?  Ah, well it’s as one might expect: catch up on the anime I missed out on this week (in particular the finale to Ano Hi Mita Hana No Namae O Bokutachi Wa Mada Shiranai, which is getting missed reviews despite the fact that the timeslot earned a rating slot of 3.2%, which is very good), as well as do some gaming on the side.  I would have liked to do some reading up in preparation for my class tomorrow, but since I wasn’t able to go to school I wasn’t able to get the notes that I needed. Feh.

Cold Evenings

It’s been raining on and off since this morning, and even this late in the evening it still hasn’t quite let up in my area.  It’s not really unwelcome though, since as a side effect it makes it so much cooler, especially when one turns on their electric fan full blast.  Which was what I was doing since I went to bed late this afternoon.  The downside to this though is the fact that, inevitably, one will have to wake up to relieve one’s bladder due to the cool temperature.  So much for uninterrupted, albeit very easy, slumber.

It’s estimated that the rain will be intermittent up to the weekend, what with the initial typhoon (codenamed Falcon here and known as Maeri everywhere else) merging with a nearby low-pressure area off the island of Catanduanes earlier.  While that means that I’ll have at least two more days without being forced to use the A/C due to the heat or humidity, it also means that, somewhere in Luzon or Visayas, someone is getting very inconvenienced by the storm.  My only hope here is that people in the areas likely to be hit by flooding evacuate, and the people living by the sea to be sensible, and not go fishing in the middle of the raging monsoon rain. 

As for me… Yet another weekend, yet another day to cram for my Saturday session.  As I checked my email, I saw that, once again, my professor has forgotten to send me the notes I need.  Not that I blame him, as a teacher’s always busy, but c’mon sir, it’s just one single email.  Really, I can do the research in the library myself, I can even photocopy the notes on my own… But I still need to know which books I’m supposed to get those notes from.  Ugh.  Better email him again. 

Not exactly how I planned to close out my week, but on the bright side it is payday on Saturday.

Nagging Details

In the short time that my father was in the capital earlier this month he, with the help of one of our neighbors, set about patching up and repainting the roof that was beside my room, as well as the one above our section of the apartment complex.  This was brought about by the fact that, in the aftermath of an earlier downpour, my sister discovered that some parts of the ceiling here on the second floor had been leaking.  Though not really a problem during your normal rainy day, it can easily turn messy during a major typhoon, so one could understand why he wanted to deal with the issue then instead of later, when the monsoon season was in full swing.

Since there was a bit of climbing involved, they used the old wooden ladder that was usually stored over in the corner of the apartments, and propped it just outside the window of my room. The thing is, after all the roof patching and repainting that was done, and even after my father had to go back to Negros, the ladder is still there outside my window, exposed to the elements.  It’s a little worrying, especially since it’s been raining regularly recently.  Wouldn’t the wood its made of, I don’t know, weaken at this rate?  It’s not like it’s sealed against with varnish after all…

Maybe they have other plans for it? I can’t imagine what else my father would want to still do on the roof.  Fix the gutters?  Your guess is as good as mine.  

It’s just such an incongruous sight for me, that’s all. 

Blurred Visions

Remember that post I did a few odd days ago?  The one where I was wondering about the last vacation I had?  Well I found it mildly ironic how my officemates were talking about just that, taking time to travel I mean.  With the rainy season, apparently some of the local airlines are now offering off-season tickets at ridiculously low prices.  I’m tempted to take a look at the prices as well, but I then remembered that I really didn’t have money to spare.  I mean, sure, the plane fare might be in the range of less than two thousand pesos back and forth, but when one has less than three thousand pesos in one’s savings to begin with… Well, suffice to say there are probably better things to spend one’s money on.

Yeah, my mind is pretty much focused on the bills that’ll inevitably arrive at the end of the month.  Payday can’t come soon enough…