Lots of things have been happening lately. Not having posted for more than a year, that's hardly surprising. But the last two weeks have been packed with things going on.

Mom is here in Manila for a visit after having left for the US nearly five years ago. She needed to have an unexpected operation and is recuperating nicely. She'll be flying back to LA on Monday and has been staying with Eyts for the past week after she checked out from the hotel last Sunday. Because of the surgery, she wasn't able to go around much. But I hope she enjoyed herself.

My work notebook has been upgraded into a slimmer, lighter, core 2 duo subnotebook. It's still a Dell, so the display isn't anything to write home about, but at least it's more powerful than my previous machine and has more harddisk space.

I'm currently drooling over a newly released Samsung phone. It's a clamshell (because I'm obsessed with clamshells). But the best part is, it's got a fully touchable external display. I so want it, I so want it, I so want it. But hubby and I've just been talking about needing to save up so we could start our business. Oh, I hope I could resist snapping it up when we pick up hubby's PS3 tomorrow. 

Getting the PS3 was a planned expense. The new Samsung phone isn't. Grrrrr! But I think I'll be staying up nights thinking about it. Grrrrrr!!

Siopao's turning two years old this month! He still wears a kittenish face every once in a while (most often when he wants his neck skritch or catnip pinch), but he's generally more laid back and subdued now (haha! I couldn't bring myself to say "regal" because he's really such a goofy cat). 

That's it for me on catching up. I do hope to update this bloggie more often.

The idea of getting a cat started out with a joke of a name. Siopao is a local meat bun that was rumored to have been filled with cat meat a few years back. So see, white and fluffy on the outside, meaty on the inside, and a dot that marks it as bola-bola.

I think he looks like a ragamuffin, but he doesn't go limp when you pick him up (one of the striking characteristics of ragamuffins). In fact, most times he goes all sorts of puppy: follows you around, plays catch, pants and lolls his tongue when he gets excited over a game. Whatever breed he actually is, he's gorgeous and knows it.

Working in Excel is unexpectedly fun. I think my graphs looked moderately nice -- or at the very least, eye-catching. For someone who used to do just simple monthly household budget basics on a spreadsheet, I give myself a pat on the back for today's work.

Just last week, a friend was saying how he had also been tasked to do a lot of Excel documentation work for a time until it got to a point where his graphs could pretty much do the spreadsheet equivalent of a full song-and-dance number. The kind of documentation work I do right now doesn't contribute much to my portfolio. But hey, I'm having fun and it pays the bills, so I'm not about to complain.

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Tonight's dinner is Sulley's famous adobo. The soy sauce and vinegar smell usually gets so strong, it sticks to the walls for about half a day. But Sulley's adobo is goo-oooh-ooood! He lets it simmer for quite a bit, too, so the meat gets really tender and just about melts in your mouth. Yum!

He's made tasty additions to his repertoire recently, too. Yesterday, we had chicken curry fried rice and chopsuey. Before that, a couple of days back, it was chicken croquettes.

Last Friday, the company I'm currently applying at started doing some serious background check and called each of the references listed in the application form I filled out. They even dropped by my home address for an unannounced interview with Sulley. It was lucky he was home at the time. But he also happened to be resting, so the lobby guard turned the interviewer away -- with good reason.

The pre-employment background check was done by a third party company, which I hear was pretty costly. I take it this means they're serious about hiring me, right?

I've had companies who've called my character references before as part of the pre-employment screening process. This was the first time, though, that someone actually went to my home to, i dunno, find out if I kept a 15-foot shark in my livingroom?

Amazingly thorough, if a little kind of freaky.

But I like this company, so I do hope that for all it's worth, they'd offer me a good package. Am keeping my fingers crossed in the meantime. Oooh, I hope there'll be good news to write about soon.

I've been obsessively tweaking my settings for the past two days. Still, I couldn't seem to find my way around doing some pretty basic stuff, like posting photos in my image gallery and such. What's up with that?

The site's a great piece of work, don't get me wrong. It would be nice though to have something other than "download gallery remote" in the iGallery section. There's probably an explanation to this somewhere in the forums, but I'm just too lazy to type up a search at the moment.

Speaking of lazy, going to the gym seems to be a fad these days, along with playing badminton and having spa treatments. This morning, the guys at work were complaining of muscle pains after starting their gym routine the day before. Here in the building where I live, residents get free use of the 15th floor gym. And from what people say, there seems to be some pretty adequate equipment in there.