So I’m still looking for an apartment right now. Actually I already found one near our office. The apartment is a bit smaller than my current apartment but its a lot cheaper too. And more importantly, its closer to my workplace. I am sort of concluding that it will decrease my expenses drastically if I ever moved there.

Since my current apartment is bigger, I started to appreciate it (especially when I’m drunk). I did some cleaning here and there, and my current one actually looked pretty neat and decent. Its just that its still far from my workplace and me taking cabs everyday defeats the purpose of renting. But still its pretty nice.

If I ever moved to a smaller place, it also means that I have to decrease the furnitures that I need to bring. I might need to not bring some tables, some cabinets, my keyboard and my electric guitar. How sad. But that’s how it is.

Hopefully I can move sooner than later so I can get more rest and save more money and enjoy life a little more.

Time flies real fast. I’m now 22, really? I’m sure that people will still make the same mistake thinking I’m some 16 year old college kid. But that’s not my problem.

Oh well, another year, another chapter. The only thing that’s the same every year is I’m blessed!  I’m always blessed and I’m grateful for that.

Last year marked the time when I haven’t had much time to work on my blogging ventures. Thanks to this, most of my blogs and web properties have kind off dropped off.

This year, it seems its time for my personal blogging time to suffer. Oh well.

All I can do these days is to listen to Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Let You Down.

Year 2011 has been a good year to me although I would consider it as one of the toughest as well. I was able to experience many many things that have left its mark on me and that I would never ever forget.

My intention is to keep this as short as possible so here we go…

January – March.  I started off the year well. I was fully occupied since I have some SEO clients and other freelance stuff alongside my main marketing job at SplitmediaLabs. Its also worth-noting that I got some increase in compensation in my work in exchange for bigger responsibilities which is understandable.

Its also worth mentioning that Taylor Swift held her concert February this year. It was pretty much documented on this blog as I wrote series of posts regarding my experience with the concert.

April – June.  We took a week to Bicol where we rekindled with our old relatives that we haven’t seen in ages. It was a pretty rough travel since we had to spend 6 hours on a vehicle and around 12 hours overall. But it was fun.

I also rekindled my friendship with people that I haven’t seen/enjoyed in a while. Namely highschool friends like Shilah, Dray, Rek, Sarah and a whole lot more especially when I celebrated my 21st birthday last April. It was a blast. There were some other things that I’d like to include here but would not do so for private reasons..

Another thing that happened was that I invested some of my money to build a “bigasan” kind of business. It wasn’t really mine but more for my parents.

July – October. I would like to call this month as a month where I faced my biggest depressions. Of course I would keep it private but it was a really tough month since I had to keep my self sane and avoid drinking too much alcohol. I also closed down my Facebook account for 2 and a half months but reopened it when I greeted Krish for her birthday.

This was also the month when I started doing freelance stuff and blog stuff anew. I allocated at least 2 hours a day to be able to do some ‘sweat work’ that I needed to do for my online business and for my clients as well. Keep in mind that at this point in time, I have been staying in office really late since I was ‘needed’ for some late night tasks..

November – December. This was the most stressful period of my SplitmediaLabs life. I stayed late up to early morning for almost every single time. I did some weekend work which is fine with me but overall it affected my *other* life since the time really took away everything. It was very very depressing since I would’ve easily been 10X richer had I choose to just allocate exactly 8 hours a day to office tasks. I could’ve at least spent 4-5 hours more to other stuff that would bring me more money. And we’re not talking about time for family and friends yet so its kinda disheartening to say at the very least…

On a positive note I was able to save a good amount of money for myself and my family since I’m really a tightass financially responsible.   It certainly does help that I don’t struggle with buying whatever expensive stuff since I was never interested with those. Another positive thing is that I gained enough weight to have me removed from the ‘underweight’ category for the first time since my existence. I’m close to 140 lbs which is something that I have never ever thought would happen. Fucking awesome!

2011 is awesome. Every year must be treated as an awesome year!

Last week I faced a very unique situation while staying in my apartment. During the last three days of the week I realized I was strapped out of cash. As in a very very serious lack of cash on my end.

Late Wednesday I realize that I only have 40php in my wallet and this is bad considering that I have to pay for my transportation everyday going to office and for my food. To make matters worse, I dont have any food stock in my apartment and I’m running out of water to drink as well. With that in mind, I tried scouring every possible store thats still opened late (11pm and late).. The twist there is that they have to accept credit card as form of payment. Unfortunately most stores here in my country DON’T. Imagine, KFC, McDonalds, Jollibee don’t accept credit cards. Mercury Drug, 7-eleven, Ministop, etc. don’t either.

So what I did after I came home was to scour each and every piece of coin that I have to make sure that I have enough left for the next 3 days (until I reach my original home). Luckily the 40php piled up to 140 some but it still wouldn’t be enough since I have to pay for my food for the next 3 days.

So what I did was woke up early the next day and went to the Supermarket so I can buy all my needed stuff and the best thing is they ACCEPT CREDIT CARDS. so there ya go. I saved my money so I can use it for transportation and bought everything I possibly could using my credit card so I don’t have to worry anymore about buying something and further more decreasing that 140 some budget allotted for transportation and other miscellaneous things. And as I was typing, you can say that I survived.

That’s it. Lesson learned? Be thrifty and wise. I am wise myself but there are always going to be times where you’ll be tested with different situations.  The key is not losing your composure.

Pre Note: This is one of those sappy posts that I just intend to write out of nowhere..

Here’s an outline:

Third Year College

It was a special year yet was also sad because its the last year of my crush (her – 3 year course). On to our last trime for that year, I talked to her for like an hour, gave her something cute and memorable and bid goodbye. Its kinda painful since she’s the ONLY woman that I had for college and if you know my history of liking woman (or the  lack of it), you would get why. Its nice because she catered to me and entertained my interest and from her own perspective, that’s something different since she doesn’t really talk to people that do seem to show some interest. Different on me eh? =p

OJT’s

Feu has this retarded policy of spending 620 hours somewhere as part of their On the job training program. I spent the first 360 at a wild jungle called ‘The Medical City’. I met great people there who taught me lots of things regarding computer hardwares and troubleshooting – two things I’m not good at. I also found lots of hot and beautiful nurses that I talked to sometimes although obviously any form of communication would be halted  by the time I completed the requirements. It was very very stressful physically but a whole lot of fun.

My next stop is in COA where I was a software programmer. I and a retard friend called Ely Cruz developed a tracking system for a department which was about tracking developed systems for their clients which are mostly government agencies as well. I never quite liked our mentor there named Ezra Palencia since he seemed to be an asshole to us yet I know given more time, we would be knowing and liking him more (and of course with us being removed the ‘interns’ tag). All in all it was fun since I got to make fun of Ely and his never ending failure in  life.

Last trime

Our last trime is colorful. We had this ADEPT thing (an english proficiency class) and we were mentored by a clearly perverted guy named Lloyd. It was also my first trime that I didn’t have Krish as an inspiration for going to school.

Again it was a good trime and I further solidified my relationship with my friends. It was also not that tough except for a subject called ‘Soft Development’ which was taught by a pimple-ridden professor.

Work.

I then worked for a software development company called WorldPartner/SplitmediaLabs and as of this writing, I’m still working there. Its fun there and its like nobody I’ve ever seen (both positively and negatively).

I was able to get my marketing head fired unknowingly and unintentionally and I was depressed at first. Long story short, I got her position and i was given a good raise although I am still one of the lowest paid employee in the company, if not one of the lowest. That makes me sad I guess. Even with that, I became close wiht a lot of people in our office and I overcame my initial 6-month period of being shy/. I’m now bubbly and I can now talk a bit. Talk about some improvement there.

So thats  it, thats the last few years of my life and this post was written with me being uhm, drunk or sort of to say the very least.

So I just took the entire next week as a VL which was immediately approved by Mr.Whitemanwhodoesntsleep. I was smart enough to acknowledge that there’s a long weekend next week  (Mon, Tue are holidays) so I took the last three days as a VL. When I sent the request, boss didn’t know yet about the holiday (I sent it last month) so I don’t think its my fault.

Plans for VL

My VL isn’t really a vacation but rather just focusing on other things. here we go:

• SEO consulting/freelance for 2 clients which is very labor-intensive and needs time.
• My own stuff (hint:melvinblog and all the craziness behind owning a flagship blog and doing some lame-ass product launch)
• De-stressing (massage, spa, sex, pampering, playing, you name it).
• Going to some place – Am planning to visit my relatives on some days.
• Shopping – will plan to buy some new stuff (mostly needed ones). And then will see the budget and look if I can buy the ‘wants’.

I hope boss doesn’t bug me too much w/emails and stuff. I mean its a vacation right? not a ‘work from vacation’ kind of thing.

Talk soon!