ATC, Sky Ranch Tagaytay, Glorietta 4: a Busy but Relaxing Long Weekend with Baboo Peter

I booked a flight to Cagayan de Oro earlier this year for Oct. 26-31. I was thinking that since baboo is always busy with work, I might as well spend time with some of my friends I rarely see. The thing is they live so far away. But what's an hour of plane ride and a few hours of commute to the City of Golden Friendship if only to see them, right? 

Well, a lot of things happened in between. For one, I didn't expect to be attending training for NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) plus the heavy workload that fell onto my lap. To cut the story short, I had to cancel my intended CDO vacation and just make the most of the holiday. Honestly, with everything going on in my life, I totally forgot that it was a long holiday (Oct. 28 being the day for Barangay elections). So I guess that's where the silver lining was in all of this. At least I got to spend three happy whole days with my baboo. He was available to me, for my pleasure, at my beck and call (hehe) for 72 hours and I wasn't going to let those precious hours just pass me by.  But the thing was, WE DIDN'T MAKE ANY PLANS AT ALL. Oh bugger!

Fortunately, my baboo was very easy to please. If I am the O.C. type who prefer scheduling every last minute detail of whatever plans we have, baboo Peter is the opposite when it comes to domestic/marital/personal matters. He loves to chill and just relax and just let everything flow. So having had my Breaking Through Barriers (BTB) training with Train Station a month ago (while baboo Peter had his a few weeks ago), we learned to adjust to each other's preferences. That's what you call second positioning. It's when you take on the position of the other person, immerse yourself in the way he/she thinks and feels and from there, get an insight as to how he/she is thinking, feeling and seeing things. So in short, we came at a compromise and it all came out naturally and subconsciously, meaning, without even trying so hard like how we used to do it before we had the BTB training. 

So, what happened was, we both let everything flow while still maintaining some sort of schedule for the long weekend. 

Oct. 26

Seafood Ilsand, ATC

We stayed in bed most of the day. It wasn't until late afternoon that we showered and dressed up, hoping to catch a movie. 

But then what do you know, it's been a while since I last prettified myself and I was just being so slow. So we got out of bed, prepared for our date and got out of the house early evening, decided to just splurge on dinner and just do the movie date another day. 

Jem's Surprise Visit in Alabang

Jem has been one of my BFF's since forever! Okay, not really forever but since my call center days back in 2001. We are both graduates of Ateneo who topped (it was a tie) our batch in Etelecare at a time when it was considered as the best call center in the industry.  We were Quality Monitoring Specialists. We were both competitive and driven but that just all the more forged our bond as friends. She saw me through my ups and downs and has not forsaken me, not even for one second. Jem is my gem. She is one in a million and I will forever be grateful for her friendship. She has long pursued her career abroad and from time to time would come home and visit us. This year, I thought she was scheduled to go home in December like last year and we were supposed to do another Asian trip. But being the adventure seeker that she is, she surprised us by coming home sooner than expected. I was busy with work; I haven't had real sleep for three days now but for her, I will always, always make time. I just love her to pieces. 

Whenever I'm with people I love, it doesn't really matter what we do or where we go. I just want to be with the person and bond with him/her til we run out of stories to tell. I'm like this with Jem. So on this one special day that Peter and I were with her, we stayed at home at first and just bonded. 

A Walk in November (Alabang Walk Under the Moonlight)

My baboo Peter and I were supposed to be in Virac by now. Our flight was last Oct. 31 and we were scheduled to be touring Catanduanes until Nov. 4. But as luck would have it, baboo couldn't get off work. His job, being one of the top digital marketing strategists in the country, is very demanding. While we were in Bacolod two weeks ago for the Masskara Festival, he had a crisis situation at work. I almost had a heart attack! And so did Peter. We had this fight and we were almost on the brink of falling apart. His work can be really stressful and it's been affecting our marriage for a while now especially when I'm at this stage in my life when I'm being very needy, hormonal, emotional and insecure that sometimes (well, recently, it's been most of the time) I'd wish I'm single just so I'd stop hurting... just so I won't miss him anymore. 

How To Get Philippine Postal ID and Advice About Getting TIN cards

I'm a freelance virtual assistant. As such, I don't really have any valid IDs with me except for my passport. The SSS ID I have is still the one I was given on my senior year in Ateneo (laminated and still has my maiden name on it); my GSIS e-card has already expired coz I no longer work for GSIS even if I'm still using my Unionbank account to pay for most of my utility bills; my Philhealth card still has my maiden name on it too; and my Platinum Visa is useless because it doesn't have my photo on it. So whenever I do transactions that need valid IDs, they always tell my that my passport is not enough. Even my NSO certified marriage and birth certificates only serve as secondary IDs.

I was supposed to get other valid IDs years ago but I always dreaded doing it for fear of wasting my time in long lines which can cause me severe migraines just like what happened to me when I had my lost passport renewed (nightmare!). I think my fear of transacting with government offices stemmed from my first encounter with Quezon City Hall back in 2002 when I had the spelling of my name changed on my birth certificate. On my birth certificate, my first name was spelled JENIFER when all my life I have been using JENNIFER. God! Do I blame my parents for this oversight? It was one of the most challenging and horrific moments of my life. Add to that the fact that I paid 26 effing thousand pesos and wasted like few months of my life just taking care of that! Don't wanna live through that kind of hell again!