Last saturday Zenia and me saw an episode of a famous program here in the philippines “Maalaala mo kaya” which mean”could you still remember” or “can you remember” or something like that. The program features real life stories of individual. Most of the time its based on love stories of couples which I really don’t enjoy much. Last Saturday’s episode was unique and very touching.

It is a story about the love of a grandmother with her grandchildren. The title of that episode was “saging”, What captivated me to watch the whole episode is that it made me realize how difficult life is for other people, especially here in the Philippines. You don’t need to go far to realize how difficult life has become for most of my countrymen.

The story revolves around a grandmother who struggles to provide the basic necessities to her grandchildren after their mother has deserted them. The family belonged to the urban poor of society, where a meal a day is even hard to get. What made things worst was that the grandmother had no income, no work and no money.The only thing they had was a shanty in the squatters located near the shore.

The first problem the family faced after the mother of the children left was their immediate need for the food. They even reached a point where in all the grandmother could offer to her grandchildren was water to keep their stomachs full. After realizing their dire situation she tried to find ways to feed her grandchildren. Luckily for them a kind hearted neighbor was able to help them.

The neighbor told the grandmother that she can get free food at the ports where they throw rejected bananas and that she can earn some money picking up garbage at the shores and selling it to scrap yards. The grandmother followed the advice of her neighbor and was at least able provide food for her children. Even though things was difficult for her she made sure that she sent her grandchildren to school in order for them to have a better future.

After watching that episode I tried to reflect on their situation. I couldn’t imagine how she was able to make ends meet with the monthly income she earned which was even less than my daily rate. I now know why my parents are very understanding and helpful to those who are less fortunate. That episode opened my eyes and made me realize how fortunate I am to have what I have right now and that I can make a change in a persons life one way or another.

One thing I learned from my parents is that you don’t need to have a lot of money in order to change a persons life for the better. My parents have already helped a couple of people, who were willing to learn and sacrifice, and finish school. Some of them have changed their life and have become professionals. I think will follow my parents foot steps in the near future.

“Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.” — Confucious

Its been a while since my last post, I’ve been really busy these past few months. Right now I’m in a very awkward situation wherein I have to decide if I have to continue doing the things that I know would benefit me in the future or concentrate in the things that I’m passionate about.

Right now I’m faced with the dilemma of what to prioritize. My professional life right now is a bit complicated, I am currently practicing as an Architect and my day job is an architectural visualizer. What complicated my life right now is that I am taking up law which is by the way really neat cause I learned a lot of things which gives me an advantage in dealing with certain problems regarding work, business, or everything that is covered by the law.

What made my life complicated right now is that I have some projects which I have to finish by the end of the month and my mid terms is fast approaching. I used to enjoy the pressure in the past but lately its really affecting me and sometimes I get so cranky that its just unhealthy.

Well if I look at the bright side I’m really glad that Zenia is supporting me with my career and my law school. It just makes things easier for me if she supports me every time I’m stressed out. Anyway I hope that I’ll be able to finish the projects on time and end up with good results and at the same time pass this semester with good grades.

I have always been a fan of Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao and I have always watched his fights live. Today was different cause I had some important things to do together with Zenia’s family. We had a great day visiting some neighboring islands near Mactan. Even though I was not able to watch the match live, I still had updates on the status of this historical match by Manny Pacquiao since this will be the first time an asian will obtain 4 titles in 4 different divisions.

Every minute or so I SMS my younger brother for some updates on the match. There were even some prank messages spreading the bad news that Pacquiao lost the match and everytime I heard the different bad rumors spreading thru SMS my heart skipped a beat. That match has got to be the most excited boxing match I’ve ever experience. The excitement of who won the match was killing me. Maybe it was because this was the first time I ever followed Pacquiao’s match without watching it.

After several bad rumors about pacman’s defeat, I was already so anxoius especially because my brother had not messaged me for quiet a while about some updates. I was starting to lose hope that maybe the rumor’s were true. Then just when I was about to give in to the bad news my cellphone had a message alert. It was my brother sending me the latest update on the match! Pacman won on the 9th round KO!!!

I was so ecstatic about the news that I announced it to Zenia’s aunt and cousin that Pacman won and it was by Knock Out. By far that match was the most thrilling match I ever encountered ever since I started watching Pacman’s matches. The first thing I did when arrived home was to search for the replays of the matches on the net and here is a link to the whole match I found on the internet.

Pacquiao vs Diaz

The Jubilee church designed by architect Richard Meier is one of the unique masterpieces of church architecture. It is rich in form, function and theory a perfect example on how innovation can create extraordinary designs. Check out my post on this in my Art and Architecture blog for more details.

After a well deserved vacation at Bantayan island I was faced with a lot of problems the day after we arrived. The next day after our vacation I needed to finish my enrollment since I only had a week left until the deadline. It took me a whole week just to process my enrollment since I had to talk to the dean for violating some of the probationary requirements of the school, to make matters worst, while I was still processing my enrollment classes had already started and one of my professors told the class that she will give us an exam on the next meeting. Sheesh, we haven’t even adjusted from the summer break and she gave us one hell of a load of cases to read.

After sorting things out with the dean, My next objective was to buy my books for all of my subjects. I was surprised when I got all the prices for all of my books. They cost more than my enrollment fee! and to make matters worst most of the books I need were out of stock. Luckily, thanks to my resourcefulness, I found other ways to secure a copy of those books. I think any wise law student from Cebu knows where to secure those books.hehehe

I was already a week late the first day I attended my class this semester,I had a lot of catching up to do with some of my subjects. The cases assigned to us were pilling up and Just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, a Typhoon struck our place and there was a long power outage. After the power returned the website where I usually research my cases was offline. Argh!!!

Anyway even though a lot of unfortunate events has happened in the past few days, I’m still glad that I have managed to overcome those obstacles. Though it wasn’t easy, what really matters is not giving up. I just hope this week would be better, I really need a break from all this constant pressure.hehehe

A simple dinner which turned into a culture shock for me and my cousins. I never thought there were so many varieties of Chinese food that I’ve never even seen or tasted. Check out my shocking experience at my Cebu food spot blog

A couple of days ago, everyone in the office has been trying out paid to click websites. I have tried it before but somehow never gave it enough attention. That is when our manager showed us what he earned when he invested a small amount of time with these sites. I opened some of my former accounts and explored some other PTC sites. I was surprised that these sites were still around and some are even getting bigger.

I researched on some other sites and found a couple of good sites which I’m going to religiously try in the next few weeks. So far I haven’t received any bad feed backs from these site, I don’t expect to earn a lot from this site but I’m willing to give it a try though, who knows maybe I might earn something from this. I have a couple of list on the sites I joined in my other blog. Please visit my other blog Money and Opportunity for more details.

I visited this blog which features some pretty neat paper models. There are some paper models which looks so realistic it really doesn’t look anything like paper. The blog has a wide variety of models from simple to the super intricate I bet it really took a large chunk of his time doing it. I admire the patience of these people making those paper models, It really takes a lot of dedication, patience and love for it in order to finish those models. Here is one of my favorite paper model from his blog.

For more pictures and projects on 3D paper Models visit his blog at papermodeluniverse.blogspot.com

Ever since summer began I was aching to spend some time at the beach. I wanted to go to the neighboring islands here in Cebu. Zenia and me have been planning all summer to visit those places but to much dismay we haven’t even visited the beaches here in Cebu. There were just s many unfortunate events that transpired during the summer such as bad weather, conflicting schedules or our resources were tapped out that all our plans never pushed through. There is only a week left before summer ends. I hope that we could able visit at least one beach this summer so that this summer wouldn’t be such a waste.:(

Take a look at what Me and Zenia envisioned for our house. Visit my art & architecture blog for more images.:)